Thank you for church and thank you for a Sunday school hour. We come and open the Bible and teach from it. And then not only that, meet together like this and sing songs, kind of laugh with each other, cry if we need to, whatever it is, support. And we're glad we can assemble and be one. to turn our attention to your word and to glorify thy name today. Save that one that's nearest hell and encourage our saints. In Jesus' name we pray and ask it, amen. Take your Bible and go to Matthew chapter 28, Matthew chapter 28. And I've finished up the lessons on Your adversary, the devil. There were 15 lessons in that. I may put that in pamphlet form. It depends on how, how hard I want to work, I guess. You know, I work on my computer is five years old. No big deal. I mean, when they get old, I get old, we get old. And it just told me it can no longer update itself. So because Google is your friend, I, okay, final word, buy a new computer. So we'll see. But anyway, you never know. But that's just part of it. But I thought we'd start a new series for a few days and it's things that you already do. I don't know how aware you are of how you're helping. but this church has always supported missionaries. And my lesson, I think I'll entitle the lessons, what about missions? And in that, I wanna cover a menagerie of topics to maybe bring us better focused on the outreach of our church. It's easy to focus on meeting, eating, we do plenty of that, greeting, but there's always, the church should have an outreach of some kind and we do, we have a good outreach and we wanna talk about that outreach, our responsibility to it. We know a lot about right here, we can see each other shake our hands, smile, laugh, tell stories, Uh, that sort of thing. But when we get outside of the circle, kind of out of sight, out of mind, but we ever need to be, uh, aware of, you know, our outreach in this case, missions, missionaries, and, uh, being a man that has kids and they were raised up in a preacher's house. And I didn't hold a gun on any of my kids to go do anything particular for the Lord. I said, matter of fact, you need the Lord to direct you in that. And you're going to have to pay attention and listen and do what God tells you. You may not be a preacher to my boy. You may not be a missionary. You may not even marry anybody like that. And that's okay. That's life. That's normal. We need you too. That's how I approached it. But in all that, you know, the boys surrendered to the ministry. They're preachers and the girls married missionaries. That was bad because no, that was good in the Lord's sense. It's bad for dad, mom, because they're gone. You know, Bethany's down there in Arizona on the border. And she said, dad, yeah, I'll send you some pictures of all the guns, all these Mexicans have down here on the border, got their hoods on their mask and the Constantino wire and the barbed wire and everything. And what we have to go through to get through the border just to go to church on Sunday. Okay. And then, uh, Jaina married a missionary son who became a missionary and moved to the Southern tip of Mexico and stayed for 17 years. in country and they started, I talked to Doug this week, I think his dad had started 33 little churches. When I say started church, that's you win two or three people to the Lord and they, okay, what do we do now? We want to have a Bible study. Well, we'll get together, we'll assemble. And they meet at somebody's house, have a cup of coffee or whatever they're doing and they'll study the Bible. And the next thing you know, that grows a little, they ask a friend, they ask a friend, they come, they come to that. They sit down and they get saved. And then the next thing you know, there's 10 of them. Now they, okay, they'll go around town and see if somebody will let them have a little place to meet and they're not meeting in the home. There's too many of them to meet in the home. So say, what is that? That's the starting of a church. That's winning people to the Lord. So I'm gonna talk about it like that. And you're a part of that. I don't know if you realize that, but Doug told me, he said, yeah, Phil, I called him this week. He said, we, my dad and mom and us and kids, My English is good today. I started, I think between 30 and 35 churches in the lifetime by the time I was 18 years old and I was born. And then we went right to the mission field right after I was born. And I kind of remember that because I knew those people when they were young. And then hence, that's why my daughter ended up marrying a missionary. Then they went back. He says, Jaina and I personally have started six churches in the 17 years that we were in Mexico. Let me ask you this. When's the last time you heard anybody right here starting a church? Because they weren't mad. Maybe God nudged them and said, you know, they didn't get mad because you brought green beans and they brought green beans and they fell out and said, well, I ain't going to church there no more. I don't like how they do their green beans. I'm going down. I'm going to start my own church. We got a lot of that. Okay. I'm not talking about that stuff. I'm talking about Matthew 28, let's read it. And we'll start there. And the question this morning is what about missions? I'm gonna say three things today, hopefully. I wanna talk about the commissioning of the service. I think we can do that. I wanna talk about the urgency of it or the command of it. And lastly, if I can get that far, I want to take the command to another level and call it compulsory service. I believe it's that urgent. It's compulsory. So that's the approach this morning. I'll give you a few scriptures as we go, but Matthew 28, I want you to read this famous passage, verse 18 through verse 20. And if you're ever going to mark anything in the Bible and you're trying to figure out what am I doing? What, who am I? What do I do? What's my role? Why do I go to church? Is it to meet, greet and eat turkey? No. Tonight we're having cookies and cocoa and coffee. I don't know. That's a good reason to come, but that's not exactly the biblical reason. All right. Part of our fellowship. Let's read our text. And Jesus came. The scripture says in verse 18, and Jesus came and spake unto them saying, all power is given unto me. This is after the resurrection. This is the final words of Matthew in the last chapter of the book of Matthew. It's after the resurrection, the Lord has reappeared to the people. It's right before the ascension of the Lord up into heaven, actually where he's at today. So he's speaking to those followers, those believers, those new converts, and to all that was supposed to transpire in the time that he left, ascended, Acts chapter one, And two, until he returns, he's giving them, we call this the great commission. Hence, my first point is it's commissioned service, but let's read the text. And Jesus came and speaking to them saying all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. That's the Lord. Say, how did he get all that? Well, when he died at Calvary, paid the sin debt of the world and was resurrected on the third day, nobody else ever, anywhere, any God ever did any of that. That's how he got that power, because he's God. Watch it. Go ye. Now here's the commission. He's looking at those guys. Go ye therefore and teach. Here's an archaic word. It's a hard word. People don't get it in the Greek. There's a definition in the Hebrew. There's a definition and then the English. And by the way, the Greek, the Hebrew and the English are all the same definition. And the word is all, A L L. I'm not being crazy here, but people don't get that. Go ye therefore and teach all. nations. When he says nations, he's talking about not a little local thing going on down here, but he's talking about the uttermost part of the world. He said, go into Jerusalem, into Judea and the uttermost part of the world. But here he says, go into all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and the son of the Holy ghost. And when you see a baptismal service, you'll always hear the preacher say just about always, and you don't have to, but they generally say it. I now baptize you in the name of the father, the son, and the Holy ghost. You say, where do they get that right there? It's part of the great commission. Once somebody gets saved, first step of obedience is water baptism. And that's not just for a Baptist, that's for anybody that's going to believe that book. We happen to get the tag Baptist because we practice that. A lot of churches don't. They have confirmation, people get confirmed. It's not quite the same as salvation. They have sprinklings and they sprinkle. That's not, baptism means immerse. Say why? Because that's, that's the mode the Lord said in pictures, the death, burial and resurrection. When they bury somebody today, they put them What's the cowboy say on the cowboy show? Six foot under. They don't just set them on top of the ground, sprinkle a little dirt on them. That's not real burial. It would stink anyway. Go ye therefore into all nations, baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, verse 20, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you and lo, I am with you always, even at the end of the world. People say, well, I got them saved. That's enough. It's not enough. You got to teach them now. Do you know how hard it is to teach anybody? Yeah. They might get saved, but man, you can't find them anymore. Yeah. That's that we deal with that today. Big time. But the whole thing is called the great commission is go teach all nations, baptize them. Those that get saved, they learn of Christ, they get saved. baptize them, teach them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. That's in other words, the Word of God from cover to cover. And that's our text this morning. So we're going to say, what is the Great Commission? One, number one, it is of God. Stop right there. No other book like this any place. It is of God. I didn't think it up. Educational system didn't take it up. It's God's plan. The great commission is for the church. When I say church, I mean, the assembling of God's people, as we study in first Corinthians and second Corinthians, where he goes into depth detail and the study of what makes up the church, the body of Christ. And everybody has a role. Uh, when you get saved, your place of the body, first Corinthians chapter 12, verse 13, you're baptized in there spiritually by the, by the Lord, you become part of the body of Christ. And that is the church. Now I'm not talking about the pews you're setting on the carpet, your feet are on or the building of the metal or the installation of the drywall. Now that's also church. Welcome to the English language, but the church, the Bible speaks of is those that assembly of God's people that make up the actual body of Christ. So the great commission is for the body of Christ or the church. It's God ordained, it's for the church, it's for every child of God. Nobody's exempt. Oh, that's just for the preachers. That's just for the deacons. Let them do all it. No, it's not. The responsibility is to anybody that's saved. Anybody that names the name of Christ, you now belong to God. You're not your own. Now we go do kind of what we want to do, but if the Holy Spirit dwells in it, he's telling it. Be careful there. You owe, you owe, so off to church you go. Oh, Brother Phil, it's not that simple. Yeah, it really is. But because we have our will, they're having a big old steak fry down there. I gotta get there early and get me a place. I need to go to, okay, whose God is their belly. Be careful. So it is for every child of God. It is not a worldly vocation. The world is not going to do this. It does not do it. They do not teach it in the worldly system. They don't talk about missions and send in missionaries. In other words, a man, remember the guy in the South Pacific during the second world war, I think his name was General Patton. He said, what this land needs is missionaries. Say, why did he say that? Was he a good Christian? Nobody read his Bible. And you know, any nation that came to God or people that would come to God, they would have a great nation, i.e. America. Amen. Now we won't get into the things and the working of the devil and how he, we just studied your adversary, the devil. We want to talk about missions, but it's not a worldly vocation. They're not teaching this down at the vocational school. They're not teaching it in high school. They're not teaching to get the colleges of higher learning. I have a lot of struggles there. It is not good work. People say, well, that's just a good work. And I do this over here. No, it's not. It's a commissioned service. That's why I want to build on that just a little. People say, well, they got Peace Corps and that ship of hope out there and doctors without borders. That's not the commission of Matthew chapter 28. That's not the great commission. Yeah, that's a good thing. I'm not debating that, but they're not going to line up with God, the things of God, and especially the word of God, nor the church of God. So it's not the Peace Corps. It's not anything. The world does, amen. A, it is commissioned. B, it is commanded. C, my point, it's compulsory, compulsory. And people say, well, when you use the word compulsory, isn't that too strong? I don't think so. That word as used is, If something is compulsory, it's an adjective, it describes that type of service. You must do it or accept it because it is the law or because someone in a position of authority says you must. And that's a Webster dictionary definition for the great responsibility that lays upon us as church people to go into all the world. So here today, every Baptist church should have one goal in mind. And let me refocus here and get us on base. That's soul saved and the establishment of indigenous churches. Say, ah, brother Phil, man, we just get together, have a big time. We have a big time. We had a big time Sunday. We ate turkey until we busted. You know, it was good. The food was good. The ladies knocked that thing out of the park. We had a good time. We met, we greeted, we ate, meet, greet, meet, you know, we did it all. But let's go back and see what every church should have a goal in mind. That's winning somebody else to Christ. I'm just not a soul winner, but you can be a part of a church that is. And you may not everybody be, That spark plug that ignites the fuel in that cylinder, but you can at least be one of the strands in the wire that comes from the distributor. Man, I'm way off now, but you can be some part of that thing. Some part of that machine that's doing the job God called you to do. And by the way, you are, whether you know it or not. So this is an informative class. If you didn't know this, you're a part of that. you, let me stop there. I probably never get this done. I brought my phone to the pulpit. I generally don't do that. I'm, I'm old school, so I don't like all that crazy technology, but I wanted to bring this cause I interviewed two missionaries this week and cause I knew I was getting ready for this class. And, um, I talked to brother Doug on the phone cause he's full blown missionary and, uh, he's starting these indigenous training centers and which start indigenous churches, and we support that. You're a part of that. You may not have known that, but if you put five bucks in a plate, $10, $100, whatever, some of that money that Brother Matt takes care of so skillfully, it goes to support that because they're out there. Yeah, I'm not out there doing it myself. You're not right there, but you're a part of that and you're helping out. I want to congratulate you on that if you didn't know that. So that's what this, but I interviewed the next missionary and that'd be Jordan Green. And, uh, he's, he said, yeah, he said, uh, I said, how's it going down there? How's the church going? Uh, he says, going good. He said, uh, um, supposed to have six photos here. Yeah. Me and a smartphone, uh, the phone so much smarter than me. I can't even, he sent me a brochure and I know you can't see this, but I wanted to read off of it. And the brochure comes from a group of men that have a ministry in the United States and it's called Master's Craftman. Masters craftsmen. They're a bunch of carpenters, bricklayers, blocklayers, concrete people, builders, framers, roofers. And he's got one for each trade that goes with him. And our goal first buildings, building Christians together and then building churches. Do you see how focused that is? That's very scriptural. They're going to win somebody to the Lord. And then when they win that person, they're going to win somebody else. And this may take, it's a process. It might not all happen in 25 minutes, but in a year you could win three or four people. They need a place to meet. And in two years, you might have 20 people. You know how church is. We've seen it here. Haven't you experienced that here? Yeah, you have. You may not have known it. Some people look at it, who are all these people coming to church? Where'd they come from? Well, somebody a long time ago in a little old one room church, maybe two room churches started with about six, seven people and started preaching because it was so unusual. And we've talked about it this morning just a little bit. And so, so crazy. They were driving in to hear this guy preach. And it wasn't because he was a good preacher and he was, but that wasn't the reason. They came because it was so unusual that somebody in the middle of his life would turn about and start in and set his goals to win souls and to build a church. And people started coming, parking on the outside and looking in to hear what was going on and couldn't get, I've been to the little place when you couldn't even get in, so hot in there. I'm glad nobody smoked. I'd have passed out in the first 15 minutes. They smoked outside, I guess, I don't know. You say, well, what happened? You were a part of that. You're looking at it right here. It was established and built and put up. You say, why? Because people got saved and people came and those people told somebody else and somebody heard. Word of mouth's a great thing. You may not know this, but let me say this to you this morning. If you come to this church, you're saved, you're a member of this church. You say, well, I'm not a soul winner, Brother Phil. I can't tell nobody about God. But you can do this. Say, are you, somebody asked you, are you religious? Yeah, I go to church. You know, that's kind of what they want to know. Where do you go? I go to hope Baptist church up there on 50. Do you know that that is a witness in itself? Say why? Because if they ever get up that morning and say, man, I'd go to church if I knew where to go. And all of a sudden the Holy spirit puts in their mind, Oh, That guy down, down the road down there, that lady over there, she said they went to Hope Baptist church. Baptists, have you ever been to a Baptist church? No, let's go this morning. And they show up and the next thing you know, they hear preaching and they get saved. And the next thing you know, they're sitting in church. And then the next dinner you have, you're looking around saying, who are all these people? What happened? You are a part of that. That's a church doing what it's supposed to do. And the reason for these lessons is to focus us on that so that we can continue to do what we've been doing and do more. Because you know what's pleasing to God? To do our job well that he's commissioned us to do and to understand that it's commanded, not only is it commanded, it's compulsory. It's a compulsory thing. I use it as a noun, but it's a compulsory thing and we're compelled to do it and to keep doing it. Now, I read this brochure and as I read it, and it's got two contacts, Eric Josh and Nathaniel. I can't see it, it's so small. Oh, there you go. You know, blow it up. Nathaniel Truster. He's a representative and the founder and director is Eric Josh. And there are probably men in their fifties, 55, 60 years old. And I hadn't told you about them. They're master craftsmen. It is a local church ministry of Wideland Wood Baptist Church in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. That's a mouthful. I would like to personally urge you to go on to the construction trip with us. They invite other tradesmen like out of our church. If you had a particular trade and they, they've got a missions trip plan because they're going to go down there and they're going to work on a building because somebody wants some people of the Lord. And they, that's what they do. I know your life will be blessed. He goes on parenting with us. She sent me this whole brochure. It's very interesting. And you say, what are they doing? Well, somewhere along their trail, they've learned just what, and we're good about that. Remember when Phil Skipper was in a few years ago and he brought his bus and the generator wouldn't work and that kind of thing. That's his house. Now I understand that, but we had men in the church that come in and his brakes wouldn't work that one year, they redone his brakes and they locked up on him and it's a bus and then a bus. Ask these guys that have buses, everything runs backwards in a bus. But somebody crawled up under that bus that had the know-how and fixed that thing. You say, what is that? That's ministry. So this ministry they're having, and if somebody's coming down in February for Jordan, this guy is gonna fly down. He's gonna raise the money to do it. His church is gonna send him down. He's gonna look at that property Jordan bought. And it's taken Jordan a couple of years to get the property bought. It's cost him $17,000. He just raised, left Alaska in a missions conference. In that mission conference, they got a burden for what he was trying to do. fourth generation preacher in the green family. And a lot of people know his dad. They know his dad's sons who are all preacher. And then they know their sons and he's one of the, their sons. And then he married another preacher's daughter. They don't know me from dirt. I don't care. But when he got in that mission conference, and by the way, Jordan's the guy with the stroke symptoms and the impediment in his speech that had the aneurysm when he was 15 and he can't hardly talk. You say, well, God can't use nobody like that. Go tell Jordan that. He's good enough to steal my daughter and have three kids and drag her off the mission field. Yeah, they're listening this morning. Keeps me praying for him, amen. And he's got these people coming down in February and they're going to look at that land it's bought and paid for. And you got to do everything in a national's name, Brother Ulysses or whoever they have there is there. And he's a Mexican citizen and an American citizen. I've met him. He's a preacher. He's a good man. So he's kind of behind this thing. And they're going to look at the slab and put, he's going to draw up a diagram, what they want, what they need. And they building a perimeter around that land, because everything down there gets stolen. You've got to build a footer, lay the block up so high, put barbed wire on the top so nobody can get in. Amazing, walls work, don't they? If they don't, take the one down around the White House. Yeah, I don't know. I don't want to get on that stuff. Let me stay focused here on that stuff. Get me going here a little bit. You say, are we a part of that? Yeah, you support Jordan Green, you're part of it. We wanted to go a step further because it was compulsory service. So last year, and I don't generally tell this, Bonnie and I scraped up some money, hundreds of dollars, and sent it down to be a part. of that concrete pour and that block laying. Say why? Because it's part of the Great Commission. And there'll be those of you that'll hear these series of lessons and you'll say, what can I do? When is there a mission trip? Do you know Jordan Green and Bethany Green? They got two or three young ladies from college coming down. They wanna see and experience the mission field and see what it's like and say why? Because they're Christians and they're saved and they wanna be a part of the Great Commission. Have you ever done anything like that? You say, oh no, I've got news for you. It'll change your mind about what God told us to do. People in third world countries receive the gospel a whole lot more readily than they do in America. Say why? Well, we got remotes, TVs, computers, bass boats, casinos, I don't know, Walmarts. I know you don't know this, but my other son-in-law, married to Jaina, Doug Rogers. They have maybe twice a year, bi-annually, because Jaina is a nurse practitioner and a naturopath doctor. She has an office in a hospital in Dallas, Texas, but they're very mission-minded. Doug starts these training centers and helps these men go out and start churches in the Latino speaking area, wherever that is, Peru, South America, Mexico, and also in the United States. Texas, by the way, is full of people that speak Spanish. They're full of the Latino people. And not only just to target the Latinos, there's all kinds of folks in this country today. Amen. That need the gospel. If we're going to be about the Lord's business. Do you know twice a year, they put a team together, they put a medical team, they take a dentist, they take a practitioner, Jane is practitioner. They take a doctor and they've got a doctor that always volunteers somewhere out of Wilson, North Carolina. and about four or five other people, about seven people on the medical field, and they go down and they'll go back to where they started these churches back years ago, and they'll minister to those people, and they'll take people that wanna volunteer to go down to see what it's like to go to the mission field for two weeks. If you've never done anything like that, I say you should. You say, well, I'm too old to go. No, you're not. At my age, I've been down there, rehab buildings. When I was young, I laid block stucco churches in Guadalajara, Mexico. Say why? I got a hold of this thing 45 years ago. I got a hold of it. God got a hold of me with it. I sold everything I had. I had a yard sale. I had boat motors and stuff people had given me. Her dad loved that stuff. I had all that junk sitting there. And a guy that you know, Tom knows, Harley Gabbard come along. You go yard sale today, Phillip? Walking around like he did. Yeah, I do. What do you want for that? What do you want for that over there? Oh, $6. What do you want for the whole thing? I want the whole thing. What do you want for the whole thing? Well, I don't know. I didn't add it up. He pulled out a wad of money and choked a cow, peeling off. A couple hundred dollars to take care of it? I said, well, yeah. I was shocked. He loaded everything back, picked it up and took off with it. I don't know. He probably made a fortune on it. I don't know. Say, what happened? With that money, I put a motor in a 1969 Chevrolet C20, three quarter ton truck that I'd traded off of Jim McQuarrie. These people know, but that motor in that truck got the motor from Pete McQueen, my brother-in-law. It was in 1965, Chevrolet Impala turned upside down in his junkyard. He said, that's a good motor and that's a 283. And he said, it'll bolt right into that old truck. And he said, all the oils down on the lifters and stuff and the pistons. He said, it won't be froze up, that'll run. We rolled the car over, pulled the motor out. I did all this, put that motor in that truck, bolted to a four speed transmission, then grandma gear. Built a wooden box, my dad gave me the plywood. I was living at San McQueen's at the time, an apartment upstairs, put my wife, my pregnant wife, pregnant with Jeremiah, the guy pastoring this church. Todd, eating Big Macs and french fries, man. If he had Big Macs and french fries, he's happy, happy kid. Brittany, sucking her thumb and twiddling her hair. What a kid. And we loaded that old pickup truck that nobody else would go across the street in. It was miserable, ugly, dark green. Had them big split rim tires on it. And I drove that thing all the way to McAllen, Texas, right on the border. You say, why? Just wanted to do what God said. I thought I might be a missionary. I had no idea I had to learn another language. I was dumb. I hardly got out of school. I didn't know I was going to have to learn another language. I didn't want to go to Mexico. I want to go to the Indians down in the state of Chihuahua. I'd read about or heard about someplace. I want to go see if I could win any of those Indians to the Lord. Well, they spoke a dialect nobody else ever had. I'm thinking, man, what am I? I can't even do this. but the Lord used all that to get me down there. And I did two more years of Bible school, preached on the street, set up in the flea markets, done all that stuff, then moved back here as an evangelist. You say, what made you do all that? Matthew 28. Go, you know the world. You know, I've seen people set in pews for years and never do anything. And I think the pastors are guilty of not sharing with them what they actually have done. Do you know you've helped Doug set up those learning centers? He told me a businessman stepped up the other day and said, Hey, I've got a whole complex down here of doctor offices. He said, I want to give you a 2000, 2800 square feet of office space. It's lit, got chairs, got everything. It's wide open. He said, for your next training center. And he said, I was meeting with him today on that. Do you know you helped him do that? You say, I didn't know. I'm telling you this morning. What about missions? You're a part of it. If you put a little money into play, because look, you can't send them a pork chop. You can't send them a chainsaw. Oh, I guess you could, but what works best for them is money, our money. That's why we support missions. because money does all that. So you've helped them do that. You know that wall that we helped Jordan build the footers for, you helped in that too. And there's always, well, I didn't know all that. Why didn't somebody say anything? Maybe I could have give three or $400, $500. Well, you did one time, because I went down to rehab a garage in their house to help them out. And I knew they didn't have the money because number one, they're missionaries and they lived off of support, whatever came in from a few churches that knew about them. And that's not generally enough. And I went down, the last time I could travel, Bonnie and I went, it's been six years now. We rehabbed that whole garage, changed everything. I didn't have the money to do that. You know what I did? I told about three or four churches, I'm gonna go down there and I need about $5,000 as my budget to change that garage into a shower place, a new bathroom place, a big conference room so they could house people that come in if they went to the Lord, that kind of thing. You know what? Big, big bang. I was in a church across the way and they said, well, we heard you tell about that, we wanna give you a little money. I said, okay, great. Wrote me a check for $1,000. It took me about four weeks to raise five grand. That was crazy. You know why? People just like you heard about it and stepped up and responded. No pressure on anybody. They just wanted to be a part of Matthew chapter 28. They said, well, I can't quit my job and go. I can't load up and go down there and lay bricks. I can't wire their facility. I can't do this, but I can send a hundred bucks. And generally that $100 is above their tithe to their local church to keep the lights on. It's above their normal mission offering. If they give a couple extra bucks, $5, $10 extra a week, I don't know. You say, what is that? That's just understanding that it's all God's anyway. And he only let you have it. See how you do it, managing it. Just like the parable over there. He gave them the talents and the one guy took it and made more and the next guy didn't make quite, the other guy took it and he hid it in the earth. Don't be like that, you're not like that. Be like that guy that was willing to understand that it was all God's anyway. So souls, churches, Indigenous churches, that's churches that can stand on their own. I'm not talking about a satellite church where you got to answer to somebody else. There's much confusion, even among fundamental Baptists over the word indigenous. I don't think it's a hard name. If you find it a lot among the tribal peoples of the Americas, the indigenous people of the area, you know, we say things like that. Generally what we're trying to say is the native Americans that were here before we were. So in the theological terminology, if we're gonna use theological terminology, when we speak of an indigenous church, we are speaking of a church which has become financially self-supporting and self-governing and self-propagating. You realize when they start these little churches, these churches finally get up and they run on their own. Yeah, they're running on pesos and they're not running on the American dollars. Yes, our budget may be a quarter of a million dollars a year or more, and their budget may be 20, $25,000, $2,000, $2,500 a year. But you're in Mexico, the average salary down there is $3 a day. But they're up and running and they're paying their own light bill and they're meeting every week just like they're supposed to. and they're preaching the gospel and they're winning others to Christ, but they're indigenous. They don't have to answer to the missionary. They don't have to answer. Now, Doug is like the apostle Paul. Remember the apostle Paul started a lot of churches and we study his journey. We'll do that. And this series of lessons, we'll look at that. But he went back to the churches and just to check on them, not to exactly tell them what to do, but I'm amazed when Doug goes back, when Jordan goes in, It's because there's an ordination service. Somebody got saved, somebody surrendered a national to preach, and now they've done the training program, and it's taken them six, seven months, and you didn't even hear about it, but I'm telling you about it. You were a part of that, and they go back for that service, and they'll preach the ordination service, and they'll be a part of that, and there'll be a festivity, and then they come back and keep on working away just like they always did. So I didn't know it was that big of a thing. It's that big of a thing. So propagating, we need to propagate indigenous, meaning they receive no financial help from an outside source, and they are not influenced by any outside organization or church, and they reproduce themselves. That's the great thing there. They're reproductive. They're gonna win somebody else. And then they're going to help somebody else build their facility. So some organizations will say that the church must be indigenous from the very beginning. In other words, they don't get any help at all. I don't see that. I don't see that in scripture at all. We'll look at some of that as we cover. This is a foundational lesson this morning. If this would be the case, there would be no foreign missionaries. We wouldn't need anybody. A lot of religions, they subscribe to that. We don't. As independent fundamental Baptists, we subscribe to the missions that we find here, the sending forth others from the church to go do the work on a foreign field and to any nation we can find. If this would be the case, There'd be no foreign missions if we took that, and we don't. The missionary brings the gospel, which leads to souls getting saved. And then the body of the church being formed is a growing process that we must be involved in. Now, look, I spent 13 months in Korea. I was saved. I didn't do all the things the other guys did. I tried to keep myself right. I'd only say that I had to focus on one thing I knew for sure, telling somebody else about Christ. I go down to the craft shop and I talked to Mr. Parks, a Korean man that ran the craft shop. And I remember the first time I ever tried to witness him and said, I just, I didn't know what to do. I mean, my 18 year old kid hadn't been saved since I was 12, but I wasn't what you call a hyper soul winner of any kind. I said, well, Mr. Parks, do you know about Christ? Do you know about the Lord? He stops down on a stool and got up close to him. And he said, yes, a missionary came one time and told me my whole family are Christians and we love God. Blew me away, man, blew me away. Ever since that time, I've had a burden for Korea and the people of Korea, love the people of Korea. And now I have a friend, his name is Kim Park. I met him at a missions conference out West. He and his wife, Jada, they are now missionaries in Korea. And I get his prayer letter every month. And I'm a part of what they do because I pray for him. I interact with him. And he was so glad that I, the army put me in Korea for 13 months and I had a burden for his people. And he went back. He's from the state of Washington and his church allowed him and sent him back to Korea. And he's old like me now. and he's over there starting churches, getting people saved, building buildings, and we're a part of that. Well, you're not a part of that one, but you could be a part of some ministry someplace like that. It has to be involved in winning souls and planting churches. Well, I wanna be a part of the food drive. Sorry, that wasn't part of the Great Commission. You understand what I'm saying? Well, I'm on the entertainment and the praise band, and I'm gonna go down and entertain them. That's not mission work. You see what I'm saying? Gotta be careful with that. I'm not saying it's not good. I'm not saying being part of the food bank isn't good. I've said, line up totally with the word of God. Because you say, why? It's commissioned. Number two, it's commanded. It should drive you. It should be a compulsory thing that you want to do. So the missionary brings the gospel, wins souls, then builds the church. It is commissioned. God said, go ye in all the world. We gave you the text. Save folks are to be about going to all nations. The only way you can accomplish that is support a missionary. I said, commanded, Hebrews 11, eight, that's forsake not the assembling yourselves together as a man or some is. And then in Hebrews chapter eight, you wonder, well, who's the missionaries in the Bible? Listen, there's been a mission program in the Bible ever since the day of old. Remember Abraham? Remember Abraham lived in the area of the Chaldees, which was a pagan place. And God called him and said, hey Abraham, hey Abram. His name was Abram at the time. What Lord, what? Speak, here am I, send me. He said, I want you to pack up your bags and I want you to go to a place you've never been before. And I don't want you to forget about who you are and who I am. You know what Abraham did? In Hebrews 11, verse eight mentions Abraham. And he says, by faith, Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed, and he went out not knowing whether he went. And that's not even in the New Testament, but God's always been sending men out. You say, why? He had quite an influence on the community around about him because they were all pagans and idolaters. And in that life and that journey that he had, which was quite long, Well, he's a hundred years old for he had his promised son. He built five altars along the way. At the time he built an altar, he prayed to his God and the people around him honored him, respected him because they respected what he was doing, where he had come from and who he was praying to. Amazing, isn't it? So it's, I kept using that word compulsory service. Are we starting any churches? That's a good question for you and me. When I was pastor at High Point Baptist Church in Cincinnati, we were responsible for starting a church down in Owington, Kentucky. I remember making the trip down there. A few families get saved too far to come to our church. So we got them a place. They finally bought a place. We give them a bunch of pews that we had. We got other stuff. We got a bunch of songbooks. We went down, we helped them. We supported them monthly. You say, why? We were starting a church. Are you starting, are you a part of starting anybody's church? You say, oh, I don't know. You are, thank you, but you can do more. You're a part of Doug and Jane's ministry. You're a part of Jordan's ministry and any other missionary that's doing the same thing. Are we helping to start any churches? Are we starting any churches? Are we willing to help start a church by supporting financially? That's the biggest way. You say, yes, this may be happening through our missions program. I've done a run on, I got a bunch of scriptures and I'm out of time. I'm a little involved here, but that's okay. I think it's that important for the church. That's called true evangelism, and that's reaching out. I think a church dies if it doesn't support evangelism, and that's going out and telling others about Christ. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for a chance to teach your word. Bless our song service. Bless the preaching and teaching of your word to the folks that get in. Pray, God, you'd soothe a blessing to them. Save that one that's nearest hell today. Encourage the church, encourage the saints. In Jesus' name we pray and ask it, amen. Good morning and God bless you.