Ken, what a great privilege it is for us this morning to have Steve here with us. You know, it's just amazing listening to his testimony this week as we had him share different parts of his life. I think the thing that really struck me was how rich a heritage that Steve has, both him and Lori, as missionary kids growing up in Africa. All their relatives, the great number of relatives that they have that are in that area. And I just think, man, what a rich heritage of a family and grandparents who have served the Lord faithfully. And I guess that's one of the things that really just stuck out to me because, you know, I don't have that. And many of you, we don't have that kind of a heritage. And for some of us, we're the first generation Christians in our families and so that's just that's just amazing amazing act of God's grace. But I don't want to take up any more time from Steve. Many of you hopefully all of you have got a chance to meet him this last week and gotten to know him a little bit better. And again we just praise the Lord that God worked it out to bring Steve here to us for a whole week being that Steve was used by God in the beginning here at this church. I was here for almost four years and now he's coming back after been on the missions field for what, 10 to 12 years? And he's here now at our missions conference. So that's just a real exciting thing for us as a church to be a part of. So Steve, why don't you come and share from the Word. Good morning. I hate pulpits. Some place to put my Bible, I guess. I do want to just express my appreciation to all of you that have been here and taken care of me this week. My wife isn't here to take care of me. And you wives know what that means. We need you desperately. But it's been a real honor to be here and be back and to see to see what God's been doing through you guys, to see that not only do you support us in prayer, but you support other missions around the world and that you guys are actually doing mission trips and all the discipleship stuff that you're doing. That is really exciting for me to see and to have been a part of that by God's grace. I'm not sure all that God's grace was involved, in getting this going here. But I know a lot of grace was poured out in that process. And I want to praise Him together for you and with you. Today I take a risk in bringing a message to you that hopefully I will not be castigated and seen in different eyes But it's a journey that I've been taking throughout my missionary career, and even before I became a missionary. God had been working on some issues in my heart, in my life, and these things began to take shape and become more clear to me. Especially as we began to work with Muslim people as we do in Guinea Yesterday I shared with the with the guys that were there at the breakfast some of those issues that we that we struggled with as we saw this group of Believers that was a fairly large group for a Muslim context 15 to 20 people that were coming to the church and yet as we began to evaluate what do these people actually follow. Do they follow Jesus or is there something else they want? And the proof is in eating the pudding. And as we began to taste and see that lives were not actually being transformed We had to ask the question, why? Because I believe with you I hope that the gospel is a powerful thing. The gospel is something that brings transformation. And if it's not being transformational in our lives, then the fault does not lie with the Gospel. The fault lies with us and perhaps the way that we understand how that works in us. The fault does not lie with the Holy Spirit or with God or with the Bible. And so as this began to become an issue in our group, We began to look and to see, what does this mean? Why does this look like this? And it sent us back to the Word, which is always a good place to go, and down upon our knees to ask God, why do people not look like they're following Jesus? They're doing all the church things. They look pretty like Christians even from the United States. And yet they don't look like Jesus. And as we began to explore this, we came across some issues. And yesterday I talked to the guys about the way we do church. and how that maybe affects some of those aspects. But the primary thing that we looked at was the way we tell people the Gospel. The way we tell the story about Jesus. And today, I want to invite you to maybe let down your guard. Not so much that you let down your intelligence and your thinking processes, But I want us to to look at the gospel perhaps with fresh eyes. You know the commercial that they had back way back I don't know in the early 90s 80s when they were trying to convince us that Kellogg's cornflakes were a good thing to eat. And so they said taste them again for the first time. And that's kind of what I want us to do today is to look and to taste the gospel again for like it's the first time that God would give us ears that would hear and assimilate what I believe is something that we've overlooked. And maybe you haven't overlooked this in your group here, but I believe that a lot of Christians overlook the aspect that we're going to be talking about this morning. So bear with me as we look through this process. If you'll turn with me in your Bibles to Mark chapter 1 verse 1. I have it there in front of you in case you don't want to look at your Bibles from the NIV. Mark 1.1. This is an interesting verse. just from the context of Islam because you know in Islam saying that God has a son is a bad thing because that makes two gods in their minds and their hearts because they believe when we say son of God that we mean that God had relationship with Mary and therefore conceived a child. And that's the only thing that they can understand when we do that. In fact, as you translate the Bible, one of the processes that you use when you translate the Bible into another language is that since you don't understand the language like a native speaker of the language, you have to figure out what a native speaker understands as he's reading your translation. And so to make sure that you don't make stupid mistakes or even bad mistakes in translation, what translators will do is they will take a text and they will go back to a village which is not a Christian place. Obviously there's a lot of those places in Guinea. And we take that text and we have a group there. that we explain the process to them and we say, OK, we want you to read along the text here and we then want you to tell us and we'll ask you certain questions so that we can kind of figure out what you understand this to mean. Well, the first time they took this text and just the first couple of chapters of Mark as they were trying to do the village testing, they get to this and it becomes very quiet. They they go through the day and and after they're done the people in the village say well, I'm sorry. We can't we can't help you anymore Well, they were very offended by this Very offended and so they didn't want to have anything to do with it because to them it was blasphemy We were saying that we had two gods So we lost that village to help us to do village translation or village testing So the next time they went out, the translator said, OK, let's let's back up. Let's not show them the text yet. Let's do some explanation. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to explain to you that when we say this phrase, son of God, this is what we don't mean. And this is what we mean. Well, that was an amazing. Just that simple act alone changed the whole tenure of the testing, because as they heard and they began to read this and they began to encounter Son of God in the process, what happened? They started to use it. They said, yeah, the Son of God. And it wasn't something that was blasphemy anymore. It was something that, yeah, this is the way it had to be. So just a simple way to look at it and to do some pre-teaching helped a lot just to help Muslims understand who Jesus is. Now that's kind of apart from our message this morning. But the text says, the beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And Mark being the earliest rendering of this gospel. I want to start there. And as we get going here, I want to have some feedback from you. Let's talk about what the gospel is. When you hear the word gospel, what do you think about? What are those elements that come to your mind when you think about gospel? Jesus died on the cross and paying for our our sin. Yeah, good. Anything else? What does gospel mean? Good news. Okay, that is probably a good distinction to understand from the beginning. Anybody else? What do you think about when you hear the word good news, gospel? What's the bad news? Okay, that's probably... That may be an American way to think, but that's that's the way we do think. Anybody else? What gospel? What does that mean? Not going to be graded on this. Come on. They will be graded. Oh, that's why there is this. OK, let's ask the pastor. But just throw out some idea. I mean, we talk about the death, the resurrection, the whole idea of what Jesus did for us. The forgiveness that will be preached in His name throughout the whole world. Paul talks about the Gospel and what the elements of this Gospel are. And yet, I wonder sometimes what we understand about the Gospel. Go to the couple of verses down to verses 14 and 15, and we read the following statement. It says, After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God. He says, The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news. So, according to these two verses, what is the good news or the gospel that Jesus is talking about? The kingdom of God is near. And so, when Jesus...actually, if you read say like the King James Version, the Old Textus Receptus, it'll say, the first verse there, verse 14, says, Proclaiming the good news about the kingdom of God. That's actually in that part of the verse. And then it goes on and it says, The time has come. It says, The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news. Now, let me just ask the question, how many times have you and I ever been told the gospel in those words? The kingdom of God is near, or the kingdom of God is here. I'd probably say 99.9% haven't ever heard the gospel in those words. So let's try to understand what Jesus is talking about here. He of course is coming after John who had come in and he had actually proclaimed the same thing. He said that the kingdom of God or kingdom of heaven is near. It's here. Repent. But John's put in prison now. He's put in prison. So his time has come and it's passed. He's been that forerunner of the Messiah. He's the one that's proclaiming and announcing the coming of the Messiah. So John John's put in prison. Jesus then begins what we call his ministry and he goes into Galilee and he starts preaching this good news about God of God. And this is what he has to say. He says the time has come. And theologically speaking as we look throughout the Bible and even into the New Testament where Paul talks about that in the fullness of time this thing happened. So Jesus is saying that everything that has had to take place has taken place. But more importantly, more importantly, there's someone here that has never been here before. And who is that person? It's him. And we all understand that. We've heard the gospel message, gospel story for a long time. So everything and that could be explored in so many different ways and so deeply. But to begin to understand that the time has come. He is on the scene. And so, what he's going to say next is only possible because he's here. And he says, the kingdom of God is near. The kingdom of God is here. However you want to understand that. Repent. Repent about what? What should we repent about unbelief. Maybe doesn't really explain what we should repent. He just says repent and then believe what. Believe this good news that I just told you that the kingdom of God is here. Now let's try to unwrap that a little bit. Unwrap that. You know when that when the people of Israel when Jesus was proclaiming this, it didn't take them by surprise. In fact, they were ecstatic about this. This was the good news that they had been waiting a long, long, long, long time to hear. This was something that for generations upon generations was being told to them that this was going to happen. And it all started way back a long, long, long time ago and came to a head when in 1st Samuel chapter 8 the people of Israel are getting tired of the judges especially the judges that were in control. You see the children of Samuel were in charge at that time and Samuel was a great judge but he was probably a lousy father it seems because his children who took over the job after him as judges were lousy. They were corrupt. They slept around. They did everything that a person was not supposed to do. And so the children of Israel, they come to Samuel and they say, hey, your kids are horrible. And we've had enough. We want you to appoint over us a king like the nations around us. So Samuel is obviously distraught by this. He can't figure out What's going on here? And he thinks it's a rejection of him. Obviously, it's a rejection of his children. And so he goes dejected and he goes to God and he says, God, this is what what they told me. And what does God say? He says, it's not about you, Samuel. It's about me. They don't want me as their king anymore. They would rather be like the world, and so I'm going to do what they asked me to do. I'm going to allow them to have a king. But just warn them, when they do this, what's going to happen? And he talks about taxes. He talks about kids going into the military and all the things that a kingdom brings about and what a king will do. And when a king gets too full of himself, what will happen? And so Samuel goes back to the Israelites and he says to them, He warns them, and this is what God says. He says, well, we don't care. Give us a king anyways. So what does God do? Gives them a king that looks very kingly on the outside, doesn't he? Pretty tall guy. A lot taller than me. And looks really good. Kind of a shy guy at the beginning. But he begins to be a problem. He begins to become too full of himself. becomes so proud and so arrogant in his ways that at a time when God says, I can't take this anymore, Samuel comes to King Saul and he says, I'm taking this away from you. And I'm going to give it to someone else whose line will be forever and ever and ever. so the kingdom is wrestled away from or taken away from Saul and God takes what was in the beginning an act of treason asking to have a king over them that was not God and he redeems it and he gives it to this little shepherd boy who didn't look like a king on the outside but he was a friend of God's And he looked like a king on the inside. And he was a guy that really wanted to do what God wanted him to do, even though he failed a lot of times miserably. But God said, I'm going to let you, and from you is going to be a line of kings that will end up with a king that will be the king of kings and the Lord of lords. So God, in His grace, Starts or continues the process that he's been promising even since Adam and Eve and he brings into into this world a a king and Then when the king gets to on the scene The people of Israel are what they're ecstatic They're saying this is gonna be great because you know back in the time of David, you know Everybody's always living back in the past Back in the time of Solomon, look at what happened to Israel. Those were the glory days. And this must be what God's going to be doing. So they're all excited. This is great news for the people of Israel. And so they're excited to hear about this. Of course, they're being ruled by Rome. They don't want this to happen. They think that Jesus is going to come and do something else. So they're reading into it probably issues that we know are not going to happen because Jesus comes on the scene and he begins to explain that this kingdom is unlike the kingdoms that we think about when we think about kingdoms. Kingdoms always have kings. And so the good news is that this kingdom of God is here in a way unlike it has ever been available until this point. And why is that? That's because the king is here. The king has come. The Messiah is on the ground now you'll notice that Jesus is announcing this gospel this good news before what before he dies he knows this is going to happen that's obviously a part of it those are the mechanics or the reason why he can say that this is good news because without that it can't be good news and so The thing that we normally bring as good news to people are usually the reason behind and not the what of the good news. And so we've done perhaps what Dallas Willard says is two errors. We begin on one side and we say that it's grace only. And then we go to the other side and you know who we're talking about here. We talk about lordship salvation. And he said basically what we're doing is we're trying to manage our sins. We're trying to figure out how this management of sin is going to happen. So we've got a gospel of sin management no matter which way you look at it. And Jesus is talking about much more than how we manage our sins. and how we can someday live forever and ever. He's talking about that the good news is that the kind of life that God intended under His rule, because a kingdom is not about something that we see on the outside, but a kingdom is about what the king wants. And who is the king? The king is God. And this God is the one that understands life like no one other has ever understood it. In fact, he sent the king to live among us so that this king could understand and comprehend life at our level. This same king was the guy that created us. So he understands what's behind life, what makes life tick, what makes things happen as they're supposed to happen. What is reality as it really is from God's perspective? And so this king comes in and he says, I've got great news for you. Life. As it's supposed to be lived. Is available to you right now. Repent about anything other than you that you thought about what life was all about and living life according to your rules according to your kingdom and believe that this kind of life this Kingdom kind of life this eternal kind of life is now available to you and so When Jesus talks about the gospel, he never uses terms other than this. In fact, as he goes along, he begins to explain what he means by this. And so in many parables, and he begins with the great parable of the sower. And in the book of Mark, you'll read about it, I think, around chapter six or so, chapter five. And after he talks about this parable, talking about the kingdom, the disciples say afterwards, you know, when they get Jesus by himself, they say, Jesus, we didn't understand that. We didn't understand what you're talking about there. And Jesus says, to you has been given the mystery to understand this kingdom. Why can't you understand? If you can't understand this, how are you going to understand the rest of the kingdom? And so he then explains that it's to those people that he's given ears to hear. And all that goes back to the Old Testament prophecies. So Jesus, as he proclaims this good news, he begins to explain what this good news looks like, what this kingdom kind of life looked like. And if you want to understand it, get into the word and look and see what Jesus talks about this kingdom life. What does that look like? It's about living life, not according to our rules or our kingdom, which all of us have those kingdoms. Each one of us has a kingdom that we run our life by. And the call of Jesus is that we repent of that. And we come under the rule of God because that kind of life is life lived in the reality as God really created it to be. Everything else is not that reality. And unfortunately, it's bad news for a lot of people. It's bad news because We don't want the rule of God in our lives. It's bad news because that means that I've got to live God's kind of life, God's kind of way, and I've got to give up my kingdom. And the reason that it's bad news is because we've never come to the place that we've understood that living life God's way is a good thing. Because we think that if we give up all of our rights, that's a bad thing. Jesus continues to preach this way. He continues to unravel what this kingdom kind of life is. And then He sends out His disciples. First of all, He sends out the twelve. And what does He tell them to preach? He says, go out and tell these people the good news. about the kingdom. Then I want you to prove that this life, what this life looks like. I want you to cast those demons out of the people. To prove that this kingdom has come and is displacing another kingdom. And that is the kingdom of our enemy. And so Jesus, every time He sends out His devil, He sends out the seven, He gives them the same message. If it's our way, if it's what we want to do, then it can't be good news. And so Jesus talks to us and says, you can't say that you follow me unless you become my disciple. You can't be in between. You can't just start off and then turn your head and go the other direction. You've got to come to the place to realize that I as your King, I as the Messiah, I understand life as it should be lived. And if you want to come and learn that kind of life from me, that's why it's good news. But you've got to trust me. You've got to believe that I hold the answer to life itself. Not life that may offer the hope of prosperity. Because if you look at Jesus, what kind of life did He live? Probably one of the poorest people around. And yet, the most satisfied, most exhilarated man that ever lived on this face of this earth, he lived life to its fullest. They said, if you're going to follow me and you think you're going to get a place to put your head down, don't do that. I'm here to offer you a kind of life that is the life as God intended it to be. It's the eternal kind of life. It's the kingdom kind of life. And that good news is described by Paul in his writings as being transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved son, Jesus Christ. And he says it's not a kingdom that's made up of just eating and drinking because that's external type of stuff. But Paul describes it as it's the kingdom that's inside of us. It's a kingdom about righteousness. It's a kingdom about joy. It's a kingdom about peace. And when Jesus is before Pilate, He says to Pilate, He says, My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, in the physical sense that you think my kingdom is, then my subjects would do what? They'd rise up and we wouldn't be having this discussion right now. But my kingdom is about doing what my Father wants to do. And Jesus lived that life to its fullest. As he's talking to the Samaritan woman and he's describing to her where the appropriate places of worship are and talking about a new way that's coming, the disciples who had gone to town and had gotten something to eat come back and they offer Jesus some food and Jesus says to them, what? I got food that you didn't know about. They all look at each other saying, did you give him food? Did you give him food? And Jesus said, well, let me explain to you. You see, I get nourished physically, spiritually, on my whole self, because my food is when I do the work of my Father and what He wants me to do. It actually brings me physical nourishment. We normally look at those kind of pretty words of Jesus, those kind of words that we say, yeah, that's pretty cool, man. I wish I lived like that. And we kind of say, oh, that was Jesus. Jesus used those words before to the devil. He said to them, the devil said, let's turn these stones into bread. And Jesus says, man, He just doesn't live on bread alone. He lives on the words that come from God's mouth because those words bring life. Those words bring actual physical existence. And Jesus' promises to us as He talks about the good news of God, the good news about the Kingdom, is that there's a life, there's a reality that is based upon God's reality and the way that He created us, the way that He put this world together that has been lost. And I bring back to you, because I am here, this reality. You can repent and you can believe in this good news. And you can participate now in that life like you've never been able to participate until this very moment. because I'm here. And that offer continues on through the generations, through the people. And as we come to close our time together, I'd like to ask each one of us, what kind of good news we live today? Where is the reality of God's life in us? You know, God is not interested simply in the idea that we have a bunch of facts about Jesus all put down on paper. He's not interested in the fact that we knew that Jesus lived and he died and he rose again and he paid for my sins. He's not really interested in all of those ideas. And it's as if we have come to the place where we think we can put all of these facts in our head and that God is going to take His scanner and He's going to scan that barcode that's in our brain and He says, yep, you've got all the information there. Come on in. Come on in. Those are the kind of people that Jesus said Do I know you? Do I know you? I never knew you. But Jesus, we talked about You. We even cast out demons in Your name. We know all the stuff. But He says, did you know Me as King? Did you ever accept the good news Life? The eternal kind of life that is lived in a relationship to this King? Did you know that? And my question to all of us today is to challenge us to find where are we with Jesus right now? Where are we with Jesus? Do we actually have a relationship with Him? And are we wanting and begging and every day coming to the King and saying, King, how do I live life like You showed us to live it? When I do that in Guinea and I call people from Islam, you know what I'm calling them into? When I call them into this relationship, I'm calling them to leave their mother, their father, their children, their work, maybe even their own life. Because that is a reality in Guinea. That is the reality when I call someone to accept the good news that Jesus proclaimed. But Jesus says this kingdom kind of life is such a great kind of life because even if you lose all of that Your life included He says I'm going to replace it with many brothers sisters mothers and fathers This reality is about life itself that Jesus is inviting us into In the end times, Revelation explains to us that all of the different competing kingdoms, yours and mine included, by the way, all of these kingdoms of the world will become the kingdom of our Lord and Christ, Jesus. I invite us to life in the kingdom. I invite us to figure out what that means in our own hearts. Then I invite us then to go and tell this good news to people around us. They're not going to believe it if our lives don't reflect the kingdom kind of life. They're going to say, your life is different than mine? But when we become, enact, and are the children of the King, then we have truly good news for those that we come and we bring this good news to. Thank you for your participation this morning. And thank you for not throwing stones at me. And thank you for maybe listening to the Gospel again with different ears. Thank you.