and to see what the task we have in front of us is. It's just overwhelming. And as a parent, but also as a Christian who's seeking to tell a culture who is unchurched and who are atheistic about God, it is We don't have any special skills, like, oh, that guy's got a skill that is needed in Iceland. That's not why we're called to Iceland. We don't have a skill that you don't have. And we don't have knowledge, some special knowledge that you don't have. It is simply following the Lord, and it's not the reliance on those skills, because it's a reliance on Acts 1.8, which is the power of the Holy Spirit within us to empower us to do His work. And so that is a thing that brings peace, when we know that we can rely on the Lord to do the work that He's called us to do. And I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for the invite. I'm grateful for Pastor Boots. I think, speaking very kindly of me. I'm not sure, but at least it got us here. So I guess it did the trick, and I'm grateful for that. I was in a Cracker Barrel in Madisonville, Kentucky when you called. I don't even know when it was, but I know where I was when I had the phone call. So I think it might have been November or something. grateful for the opportunity to be here. Grateful for the time we had at dinner with the Reese family. And I'm dealing with a crab cake right now, so I don't know exactly how that's going to work out. But it was a good experience. So, I think it was my first one. But it was very good. Let's take our Bibles and turn to the book of Acts, as you could probably guess. Acts chapter 1, I'm going to talk a little bit in my testimony, but it's a blessing to see how the Lord has worked in our life for the last four years. Specifically, as we've traveled, we started deputation before COVID and we lost 27 meetings due to COVID. We went about six months without any About five, six months without any meetings. We've had three kids on deputation. There's been a lot that's happened in the last four years. And it's neat to look back and see what the Lord has been doing for those four years. Because in the midst of those times, you don't see it. And sometimes it's a little bit of a foot tapping time, not bluegrass foot tapping, but just like what's going on? Why are we, you know, what's taking so long? Why are we sitting around? But the Lord is working, he's faithful, and it's neat to see that. It's neat to see, looking back, say, oh wow, look what he's done in our life. Look how he's brought me and my wife so much closer together. He has worked in our life, and I'm grateful for that. The Book of Acts is a book you're very familiar with. I'm very familiar with it. It's a missions conference regular. I'm sure a missionary comes in. Very often they're preaching from a passage within Acts or referencing Acts in some way. And that's on purpose. Because as you understand the scope of the scriptures, our work really starts to zero in on this book. In the grand scheme of the Bible, the 66 books that we have, Acts is when things start taking shape. The specifics of the work that we have start to come into focus in Acts. You have, in the Old Testament, the Lord who would deal with a nation as He called them out. And obviously, that's just to overgeneralize the Old Testament. But He called out a group of people. He called out a nation, the nation of Israel. And He rescued them from bondage, brought them to a land that He promised them, and established them as a witness to the rest of the world. From the beginning of time, God's desire has always been that the world would know him, right? That's not a new command. That's not a new desire of his. It is from Genesis 1, 1 on, that has been his desire and his plan has been working towards that end. And he used the nation of Israel throughout the Old Testament. We know the failure of the nation of Israel. They forsook God and they served other gods and the kingdom was split. They were taken into captivity and God judged them. And so the method with which God had used in the Old Testament, which was the nation of Israel, no longer was, he no longer used that. And then we get into the New Testament and we start to see the fulfillment of many things. As we heard sung tonight, since before time began, the plan that God had, salvation for the world, it started to come into focus. And Jesus came and he walked the earth and he worked on his earthly ministry really for the focus time of three years. We know the fulfillment of that was his death, the final sacrifice on the cross, the perfect sacrifice. There would be no sacrifice needed after Jesus offered himself for the payment of all of our sins. It was more perfect than bulls and goats and doves and anything else. Jesus was that perfect sacrifice. But as he worked on the earth in his ministry, he also was accomplishing other things. He was revealing himself to the world, to the people around him in Israel. He was teaching and discipling. He had many followers, thousands of followers at different times. People who would follow him from city to city, they would follow him into the country to hear him preach, to be fed, to be healed. But he had a very intimate group of men that followed him, men that he invested in. The pastor mentioned your discipleship time, which is hopefully a very relational time. You spend time with people, that's what discipleship is. And we know that because that's what Jesus did with his chosen 12. He spent time with his disciples. But he was establishing something, and he told them, the work that you will do is greater than the work that I will do. There was a plan for these disciples, and they didn't know what it was. There was much confusion as to what that plan would be. You would see the disciples' interaction with Jesus, many times they would walk away confused. John 6 is a good example of that when he's speaking of the blood and the flesh, right? He said you need to be partakers of the blood and flesh, which is a very difficult thing to even preach. And it was a difficult thing to hear. And it said many disciples from that moment forward stopped following him. They went back because it was a hard thing to hear. And Jesus asked Peter, he said, wilt thou also go away? And he said, where will we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. They knew, they didn't know everything. They didn't comprehend everything he was doing in their lives, what he was teaching, but they knew that he was eternal life. It was through him. And so they followed him and he was teaching them and he was patiently guiding them along. He knew what they were comprehending. He knew where their minds were. He knew that they would hang back and they would ask each other questions about what he was saying. He knew those things and he allowed it to happen. He knew that things would become clear in the fulfillment of time. And so then he died and his ministry is fulfilled as he ascends into heaven. And we see that take place at the beginning of Acts. And Acts starts with that story for a very clear reason. Because Acts is the work of the Holy Spirit on the earthly ministry of God's chosen people, or called out assembly as we would describe it now, the church. These local churches throughout the world are now the tool with which God would send the gospel forth to the ends of the world. And Acts is the work of the Holy Spirit through those who put their faith and trust in the work of Christ. So we get into the Book of Acts here with that understanding that things are changing. The disciples are coming really to the forefront of this ministry. They are to take charge and to take leadership roles within this work. And yet there are many questions that they have that they don't have answers to. And so we're gonna start reading in Acts chapter one, and we're kinda gonna skip forward into Acts chapter four, where we'll spend most of the time this evening. But we're gonna start reading in Acts chapter one. Before we do, let's go to the Lord in prayer, and let's ask him for his blessing on our time here in his word tonight. So let's pray. Father, we are grateful for your word. We are grateful for this gathering tonight. on a Thursday night, your people faithfully coming out to hear your word preached, not to hear me speak, but to hear your word proclaimed. And I pray that I would be faithful to it, that I would not complicate things, that I would not muddy things, but that I would clearly proclaim this wonderful truth that you've given us. God, thank you that we are able to rely on your word to guide us. Thank you that we are able to rely on your Holy Spirit to indwell us and to empower us and to reveal the truth of the scriptures. And I pray that tonight that would be the case for each individual. I don't know what the needs are, but you do. And I pray that you would do a work. I pray that you would help us to be attentive to what you have. that we would be able to push out the distractions wherever our minds might wander, wherever our eyes might turn to with a noise or whatever might distract us. God, help our focus to be on you. Help our focus to be on your word. God, and I pray that you would use me tonight as I preach your word. Thank you for your love. Thank you for your desire to use us. Help us to be faithful. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Let's start reading in Acts chapter 1 verse 6, it says, when they therefore were come together, they being the disciples, kind of a broader group than even the 12, when they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? Now before we go any further, this was their focus. You see throughout the ministry, they were waiting. He was their Messiah. And to the Jews, even 2,000 years later, they are looking for a Messiah who will raise the kingdom of Israel up in its anointed position. This is what the disciples were even looking for. That's why the death of Jesus on the cross, one reason that was so disheartening to them, because he was not the Messiah in the way that they thought he was. And we understand the spectrum of the scriptures. We understand what he was doing. And he would say it over and over again, my kingdom is not an earthly kingdom. But yet they were still focused and fixated on this point, well is now the time that Israel will rise and throw off the bondage of Rome and Jesus will be the king and he will be the king over a nation of Israel one day. We believe that, we see that throughout the scriptures. But that time is not Acts chapter one. And so that's their focus. It's this kingdom, earthly kingdom that they are fixated on. Verse 7, and he, Jesus, said unto them, it is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power, but ye shall receive power. After that the Holy Ghost has come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth. And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight. He's gone. The last command that Jesus gives them is this command to forget about the nation of Israel as far as the kingdom that you're so excited for. That's not what the calling is. The calling is Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and then the part that really was probably beyond their understanding, the uttermost. It doesn't matter what you say Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is. I'm sure you've heard that described. All that matters is the uttermost, because everything is included in that. The uttermost is as far as you can go that there's a person. That's the command. As far as we need to go. the island that's south of India that has 120 members that has never been reached. Do you remember a few years ago there was a missionary, a different stripe, but a missionary who preached the gospel who sought to go out there and he was put to death? And the outcry that arose from that. The calling and the command is to the uttermost. It's to everyone. It's to Poland. It's to Iceland. It's to Nashville. It's to all of these countries that I'm not going to try to name. It's all of those places. And it's more. That's why you all, your pastor continues to have conferences and continues to bring missionaries that are going to countries that maybe you're not familiar with or that you don't support a missionary to. Why? Because the calling is to go to the uttermost. And so Jesus now is refocusing the disciples and the church on what his command for them is. It's to be witnesses. When we break down evangelism, sometimes we can kind of lose focus on what exactly it is we're doing. And the bottom line is, as Jesus describes it here, we are to be witnesses. We are to simply tell what we have seen and heard. What we know to be true. Our personal experience, yes, but also what's given to us in God's Word. Perfectly preserved for us through all sorts of craziness the last 2,000 years. We have this. This is the source, really, this is what we stand on. That's what our command is. And you know what? When this verse was given, the disciples got it. There was something different about Peter from even 40 days prior when Jesus died and he denied Christ, right? And they were kind of, they all went their ways. They just didn't, they really didn't know what to do. But here we are dealing with a new group of people, it would seem. Rejuvenated, renewed because the person they had seen murdered on a cross just a few weeks prior now was alive tangibly. They felt him, they touched him, they heard him speak, they saw him eat, right? He was right in front of them. And so that renewed and the rejuvenated faith now leads them to this point where they grasp the command that's given to them and they move forward. Now he gives them the specifics, and we won't break down all of the specifics, but basically what he said is, he said to wait, right? That was earlier on, we didn't read that. He said, wait in Jerusalem. And the understanding is until the Holy Spirit would come and empower them to do the work that he'd called them to do. And so they wait, and then in Acts chapter two, we see it come to fruition. The Holy Spirit empowers them, they go out and they preach, and thousands are saved, and it jumpstarts a movement that starts sweeping through Jerusalem. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands are saved. The church at Jerusalem, I've seen estimates as high as 100,000 people. But even if it doesn't get that high, we're talking 20, 30, 40,000 people who are believers in their meeting as Acts 2 describes it. They are daily and from house to house, they are unified in one thought. They are unified with this focus that Jesus had given them just a few days prior before his ascension. The disciples in the early church, they get it. They understand the command, they grasp it, and it consumes them. And then we get into Acts chapter 3 and we start going from kind of this broad picture of a movement that's starting and the thousands saved to individual stories that start taking place. Acts 3 is a good example of that where we see Peter and John walking through the temple. If you want to go through there. Or if you want to turn there, we're looking at verse 4. It says, just to understand, I know most of you guys understand this story, you know this story, but this lame man is sitting in the temple asking for money. And he asks Peter and John for money as they are walking through. And it says in Peter, verse 4, fastening his eyes upon him with John, said, look on us. And he gave heed unto them, expecting to receive something of them, which he did. Not what he thought. Then Peter said, silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. That's a shocking statement for this man and a shocking statement for those who are around. It's a time of prayer at the temple. I don't know exactly what the time of prayer at the temple was like, maybe a little different than our prayer times, and I don't know what your times of prayer are like, but many places they're quiet and subdued, maybe one person speaking. I try to keep my children quiet and behaved because we sit in reverence as we talk to the creator of the universe. That's the concept behind this prayer. And at the time of prayer in the temple, it was individuals going and praying in their corner. And I know the Pharisees would pray their prayers out loud so everyone could hear of their holiness as they would deride the publican over in the corner. But it was still this time of kind of reverential speaking to Jehovah. And here's Peter kind of coming in, disrupting this whole thing. And he says, hey, I don't have any silver and gold, but such as I have, give I thee. Rise up and walk. And he took him by the right hand and he lifted him up. And immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. And here's his response. And he leaping up, stood and walked and entered with them into the temple, walking and leaping and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God. It's disruptive. And everybody stops what they're doing to turn and focus on these three individuals, Peter, and John, and the used-to-be lame man, to see what the ruckus is all about. And Peter, understanding the command that Jesus had given him just a few days prior, maybe a few weeks prior, He takes that opportunity. In verse 12 he says, And when Peter saw it, he answered unto the people, Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? Or why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk? Do you know what he does? He preaches Jesus. In the temple, time of prayer is over, Peter's preaching. And he preaches salvation through Jesus. Verse 19, repent ye therefore and be converted. These men of faith who are praying in the temple, he tells them to repent and be converted. And he's preaching the gospel. And this great movement happens. Thousands of people are saved. 5,000 men is what it says were saved later on in the chapter. And then we get to chapter 4, and chapter 4 is kind of the repercussions of what took place in chapter 3, because if you read in verse 1 of chapter 4, it says, And as they spake unto the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them. That's not a gentle or nice term, came upon them, being grieved that they taught the people and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. See, that's what causes the issue with people, is that the resurrection from the dead is strictly and solely through Jesus. Faith in Jesus. Not some amorphous faith that can be as long as you truly believe. No. We are going to the ends of the earth and to the uttermost because salvation is only through the name of Jesus. It's only through the work that He did on the cross. It's only through His payment for our sin and for the sins of the whole world. And this is what grieves these men. They thought they were done with Jesus. They had put him to death. Yes, the rumors of his resurrection were moving through Jerusalem. But for the most part, it was contained. And now they walk into the temple and here is this man who is preaching Jesus. And he's telling the holy man of Israel to repent and be converted. And they laid hands on them. We are getting ready at our home church. Our assistant pastor just surrendered to the missions. And so we are getting ready to ordain him. Different type of laying of hands, just to clarify that here. That's not what they were doing here. They laid hands on them in a very aggressive way. right, two hands maybe, the nape of the neck, and they threw them into the hold because they had to figure out what they were going to do with them. So just to kind of briefly outline this passage so you kind of understand what's going on. I don't want to read all these verses here. Verses 1 through 4, we see the cause. This is the cause for the leaders being upset, cause for consternation, whatever you want to say. But the cause is they preach Jesus. Then we see verses 5 through 9, the leaders examine Peter and John. Verses 10 through 12, we see Peter and John answer the examination. They're checking on Peter and John, and so Peter and John answer, respond what they're doing. Then we see verse 13 through 17, the leaders confer amongst themselves, what are we gonna do about these men who are preaching Jesus? And then we get to verse 18, and this is where we're gonna pick it up. It says, and they called them and commanded them, they being the Jewish leaders, they called them and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus. Well, that's antithetical to the command in Acts 1.8, right? Jesus said, you shall be witnesses of me. You can't be a witness of Jesus Christ without speaking or preaching in the name of Jesus. So this command is completely against what they are commanded to do by the creator of the universe, Jesus himself. But Peter and John answered and said unto them, whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye, for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. You look at this verse and what you see is Peter and John being compelled to preach. Almost as if they are being propelled forward. Right? The words are almost forced out of their mouths, not by Jesus, but by the reality of the message. Right? The truth of the gospel, I almost fell coming down earlier. I don't want to do that this time. The truth of the gospel should be so real to us. And I think there are many times when it's not. Right? It's easy in the moment when you have some interaction with a person. And we know, you know, a lot of times you make eye contact with a person. Is this someone I can talk to? Just about anything. You having a good day today? Maybe you're walking through the store, you're at the coffee shop. How's you guys been busy today? And there's just a little opening. I don't want to bother them. How easy is it for us to suppress the power of the gospel in our own lives when the opportunity arises? This is not a me preaching at you thing. I think this is a Christian, this is a failing Christian problem that we have. The reality of what Jesus did, do you understand What he went through on the cross? What he went through on the way to the cross? Do you understand his body, how torn and destroyed it was? Do you understand that he bore the wrath of God himself? poured out on him, on Jesus, the wrath of the entire world for the payment for our sin, the penalty, the just penalty for our sin that was poured out on Jesus. And he bore that and he gave up the ghost, but he had power over sin and death and the grave. And not only did he have power over sin and death and the grave to show his deity, but he had power over sin and death and the grave to offer to all mankind freely this salvation. Right, not only did he pay the penalty for our sin, but he offered us his sonship so that we could be as he is. As far as we are also, we can be in heaven in the righteous heaven with God. That's what he's done for us. That's what we're suppressing. And Peter and John, right in this moment, we see what it has done to them. We cannot help but speak of these things which we've seen and heard. It has so affected us. I was saved when I was four years old. It is hard for me to think back before I was four. I mean, that's a long time ago. I was really young. I distinctly remember, though, the few weeks before I was saved. And can I tell you, as a four-year-old, I didn't have much of an understanding of what miserable was, but I know I was miserable. I knew what sin was, and I knew what the penalty for sin was. Believe me, I grew up in church. I heard it all the time. And it was terrifying. And I remember as a four-year-old boy walking down the stairs to my parents' room, my dad was gone for work already, and I came to my mom and I had already told her the night before, I said, Mom, I want to be safe. And she was very careful to help me not just do something because everyone else was doing it. Right? This was not about, okay, well, here's the prayer you pray. No, it was, she took the time. And so I remember coming downstairs and she took that time, I don't know how long it was, to show me the wondrous story of the gospel. And my salvation from the wretched sinner that I was as a four-year-old might seem anticlimactic compared to this story right here. It might seem a little more low key than what Peter and John witnessed. the death of Jesus, they heard him speak. but the salvation is exactly the same. And the magnitude of my salvation is exactly the same as the magnitude of Peter's salvation, and John's salvation, and this lame man's salvation, and the 5,000 people who are in the temple praying their salvation. It is the same level of magnitude as theirs. That's what I am a witness to, my salvation and what Jesus has done for me. I don't know what he's done for you, but I know what he's done for me. And if that doesn't compel me to say something, then nothing will. No message that I preach will compel you like your own realization of how wicked and destitute and vile you were in the sight of God, and yet he offered out this hand, he offered out the free gift of salvation. That should compel us towards something. And for Peter and John, it compelled them to go against the Jewish leaders. Do you understand that this threat, and it was a threat, they were just in the hold, they were just in prison. This threat came from a group of people who had just murdered Jesus. So it's not an empty threat. It's not just, you know, you see sometimes, hopefully it's not you, but sometimes you go into the store and you see a parent dealing with their child, and the child knows that the threat towards them, directed at them, is an empty threat. And so they can do whatever they want. This was not an empty threat. There was some reality behind this. So they let him go, the Jewish leaders. We can't do anything else about it. They let him go. Let's keep looking on. Verse 23, it says, and being let go, they, being Peter and John, went to their own company and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said unto them. Now, their own company would be their body of believers, right? Maybe the local gathering of the church, however you want to visualize it. But that's what we're talking about here. We're talking about a group of believers. their own company, who they associated with. How often were they together? Daily they were together with these people. They were seen probably in the community with these people. They were worshiping in the temple. They would actually worship and preach in the temple. And so they go to their own company and they let them know what happened in verse 24. And when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord and they said, Lord, thou art God. which has made heaven and earth and the sea and all that in them is. What is happening here? This is a prayer from the church, from the believers, Peter and John's own company, to the God of heaven. They had just been threatened. You must be silent. You are not allowed to preach in the name of Jesus. And they come to the church and the church says, let's pray about it. And you see here a good start to a prayer. Worshipping the Lord, what a great way to start our prayers. Many times we jump right in, we got the request and we offer them up to the Lord and many times that's where there's something dire, we're dealing with that. But what a wonderful thing it is to praise the Lord in our prayer. You know, part of this could be them worshipping the Lord, part of it could also be maybe them reminding themselves, this is who we're talking to. This is who it is that gave us the command. Now has made heaven and the earth and the sea and all that in them is. And they go on and they continue praising him for who he is. Verse 29 says, and now Lord, this is continuation of their prayer, behold their threatenings and grant unto thy servants. Let's stop right there. This is the request. They haven't made a request up until verse 29. And they're about to request something from the Lord. They just had a group of leaders who have threatened them. Don't speak of Jesus. What would our request be? We've gone through the last three years, how much our world has changed. Everything is happening so fast. Things are changing so quickly. attitudes towards so many different things, the unrest that we feel in our government and in our country and in the culture war that's going on that's dividing families and communities and states and our whole country apart. We've experienced this. And there were times when the churches were required to shut down. And most churches did. I don't say that with any, we were figuring out what was going on. But it's for us, it's the first step down the road towards someone, a government figure, telling us to not speak of Jesus, right? That's as close as we've gotten in our country. It's hard for us to process that or to imagine that. I know somebody in a very close country, a very close friend of mine who's in a very close country, and they were there during COVID. The restrictions were just oppressive. They didn't miss one church service. He said, we're used to having church and not being allowed to do it. It's real for them, but it's not real for us. But we can envision it now. We can see it. We see how it might happen in our own country that's derived in freedom, religious freedom, and freedom of speech to say what we want. What would we ask in a similar situation? Lord, grant unto thy servants an easy path before us. Lord, grant unto thy servants leaders in our government that would be friends to us. Lord, do away with the people who are causing problems in our life. And I'm not here to rail against those type of prayers, because I have no biblical ground to stand on. But what we see here in Acts chapter four is not that type of prayer. And I truly believe it's connected to Acts chapter one eight in a very real sense. Peter and John in the early church understood what the command was. Their command was not a literal command to unseat the political and the Jewish leaders. Their command was not to make Jerusalem a city that was friendly to the local church. That was not their command. Their command was very clear and their prayer reflects that command and look what it says, grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they may speak thy word. That's the command. We can't affect the other things. And I'm not here to say we should just turn our backs on everything, the political movements that we're a part of or whatever. I'm not saying we should turn our backs on that. But we need to understand what the focus of the church is. The focus of the church is to worship the Lord. And we worship the Lord by proclaiming who He is to the whole world. And it's done through this right here. Grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they may speak thy word. Verse 31. And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and they spake the word of God with boldness. That's the command. That's the focus. That's what you should be doing. Right? That's what I should be doing. Do you know why it takes boldness? Because it is a difficult thing to proclaim. Salvation's easy, but you gotta get somewhere. You gotta start before that part. Salvation is not understood without the sin part being understood. If you're like me, and maybe you're not, maybe you enjoy to talk to people about their sin, but I don't. It's a little bit awkward. Did you know that you're a sinner? You're wicked. Maybe you can say it a little different than that. But that's what we're proclaiming, their wickedness in the sight of God. It's not a natural thing for us to proclaim this. It takes a supernatural boldness. And that boldness comes from one source, the Holy Spirit who indwells us. It's not some trained emotion or feeling that we have. It's not through putting your earbuds in and psyching yourself up to go preach the gospel. It is through the filling of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Now don't get confused with some charismatic understanding of what's happening here. If you're a believer, the Holy Spirit indwells you. He lives within you and He will never leave. He's a seal until we are glorified and we are with Jesus and our salvation is completed when we are with Jesus. We have the Holy Spirit who lives within us. If we are a believer, if we put our faith and trust in the work of Jesus Christ and what He's done on the cross, then we are saved and it can never be taken from us. The Holy Spirit lives within us, but we still have the flesh that fights against that. Right? We have the desires of our flesh. And so the command then, as Paul speaks of many times throughout his epistles, is to yield ourselves, is to surrender ourselves to the Holy Spirit, to allow ourselves to be a vessel used for Him. And that's what we're talking about here. That's what's happening here. They're praying and they are offering themselves as tools for Jesus to use to further the kingdom. If we are to proclaim the truth of the gospel in a world that is destitute and aggressively, aggressively against God's word, it will be done through boldness that comes through us being yielded to God. That's how it works. I'm going to go to Iceland, and we're going to preach to a people who are a godless people. 0% of adults 25 and under believe that God created the world. We're talking about a Western Protestant culture. They don't believe in God. They don't need anything. They're wealthy. They don't have a crime problem. They average less than a murder a year in the entire country. They just don't have, they don't have those problems, but they are godless. And that's not me, some Baptist missionary throwing that term around. That's them describing themselves that way. Happily godless. And it's not because I've trained for this. It's not because I went to Bible college or I was on deputation or I met this person and he gave me a way to do it. It is through the Holy Spirit who indwells me that I will be able to fulfill the purpose that he's called us to do. It's being obedient to the Lord. This command, what did Jesus tell them? The command to go to the uttermost and to get to the uttermost and to reach the uttermost and to preach to the uttermost is a command that is done when the Holy Spirit will empower us to do that work. And it's not the Lord holding back that power from us. You gotta really ask for it. You gotta say the magic words. That's not how it works. It's just us yielding ourselves to him. Lord, I don't know what it is that you want me to do. I don't know why you want to use me. I don't have the talents that you need. Yes, you do. Because he doesn't need any talents. He just needs you yielded to him. He just needs me yielded to him. Lord, use me. I don't know. I don't know what to say. I don't know how to do this. Who am I supposed to talk to? That's for God to worry about. We just are supposed to be vessels. As you said, we are to be, it is required in a steward that a man be found faithful. That's all we have to do. That's all we have to worry about. God, I wanna be faithful. I wanna be your servant. I wanna serve you. A servant doesn't choose what he does. Right? I'll be your servant, but this is the only thing I'm going to do. That's not what a servant is. A servant is here to say, whatever you need, master. Whatever you need. We have to refocus. Because the command, the command is not a complex command. The command is to take the truth of the gospel that we have all experienced. And I say that, hopefully, We've all experienced the reality of the gospel in our lives. Jesus, death, burial, and resurrection. We are to take that to the uttermost. That's what he's called us to do. That's what this missions conference is about. It's so easy to get sidetracked. It's so easy to say that, go down the rabbit trail, and just one degree off of what we're supposed to be focused on. And pretty soon we are way off course. And we are worrying about things that don't need to be worried about. And we are doing things that don't need to be done. They're not accomplishing the task that God has called us to do. And so we must be focused on what he has called us to do. What he has called you to do. And it's your responsibility. It's not missionary Nate's responsibility. I mean, it is. It's not just my responsibility. It's your responsibility. And let's be faithful. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We're so grateful for your desire to use us. would desire that we would be included in this plan, in this blessing to take your gospel to the ends of the world. And I pray that we would be faithful to that end. God, help us to be focused on what it is you would have us to do. With heads bowed, eyes closed, let's stand together this evening. We'll have a short time of invitation. The only thing I'm gonna ask is that if the Lord's dealt with you, you come down to the altar. Deal with Him right now. Don't wait. Don't wait till you get in your car, you get home. That's what this time is right here to deal with the Lord. If He's spoken to you tonight, if something's convicted you through His Word, you come and you deal with Him. What are you focusing on in your life, in your heart? What is it that consumes your time? What is it that consumes your