But because of the time and what we need to get accomplished here tonight, would you please open your Bibles to the book of Haggai chapter one. And when you get to that place, if you're able, would you please stand as we read God's word. We're gonna look at some very familiar verses, but we need to hear these verses again. And so we're gonna look at these verses and go through and we're gonna talk about accomplishing our mission tonight. accomplishing our mission. And we're gonna look at three areas, our arrangement, our attitude, and our action. That's what we're gonna look at here this evening real quickly. So here in the book of Haggai chapter one, let's start here in verse three. It says, then came the word of the Lord by Haggai the prophet saying, is it time for you, Oed, to dwell in your sealed houses, And this house lies. Consider your ways. You have sown much and bring in little. You eat, but you have not enough. Thus saith the Lord of hosts. Consider your ways. And so that's what I want to look at here with this words here from Haggai. Consider your ways. Are we accomplishing the mission that God wants us to accomplish? That's the question here tonight, so let's pray. Father, we thank you for the opportunity to ask tonight any father that you would really grab a hold of hearts here tonight and allow your words to penetrate deeply into them. We ask any father that you protect this sanctuary so Satan cannot come in and disrupt the services. but Father, that your Holy Spirit will be able to accomplish what he needs to do here tonight. Thank you again, Any Father, for these folks and ask that you would really move upon them here this evening. In your son's name we pray, amen. Thank you, you may be seated. We're gonna look here tonight about accomplishing our mission. I was in the Air Force, I just mentioned I was TDY to Scott Air Base, and I was an air traffic controller and we had a mission. Our mission was to get the airplanes out safely from the base to go to their destinations, wherever it might be, and then bring them back again safely to land. That was our mission and our little, our area in the Air Force. Other areas of the Air Force had other missions. Mission was to protect the nation. That was the mission of the Air Force. And so here we have a mission as well. As Christians, we have a mission of getting the gospel out to the world. And yes, even as your sign says, as you walk through the door, you're about to enter the mission field. Right here is a mission field. And from here, you go out throughout the whole world, but the whole world needs to hear the gospel. And Friday night, I'll even go into a little more detail what's going on in Germany. But we have a mission here, and that's why I wanna look at, first of all, about where are we in this mission? And we're gonna look at these three different areas, the first one being our arrangement. So if you'll turn over to 1 Kings chapter 22, 1 Kings chapter 22. I want to show you one verse here and how this is a good picture of what's going on in churches today. 1 Kings chapter 22, and look here in verse 48. Jehoshaphat made ships of tarshes to go to Ophir for gold, but they went not, for the ships were broken at Ezegon-Geber. We see here that there was ships made. Why are ships made? What's the purpose of a ship? The purpose of the ship is to go onto the oceans, to carry goods from one area to another, and vice versa, to bring goods back to the area. That is the purpose of a ship. The ship had a goal. They had a job to accomplish. Now, when they go on oceans, sometimes it's not a very easy trip to take. It's very dangerous. the storms that rise up and ships do sink. But ships were built to bring in the goods. We are like ships. Christians are like ships. And there's an old saying that says, a ship in the harbor is safe. And that is true. Harbors are built to protect ships, but ships are not supposed to stay in the harbor. ships are supposed to go out into the oceans. As Christians, this is our harbor, the church. We are not just to stay in the harbor. We have a job to do. We have to go out and go on into the rough seas and to give the gospel out to people that need to hear about Lord Jesus Christ. We need to leave the safe harbor and go to a place and go see others, friends, coworkers, families, wherever it might be. It might even be a foreign land. But we have a job to do is that's to go out on the oceans, to go out in the seas and to deliver the goods. These ships were built to bring in gold, but they never brought them in because they never left the harbor. A lot of churches today have members who never leave the harbor. And what happens to the ships when they never leave the harbor? Well, it says right here where they say the ships were broken. They wrought it because they never were used. They just sat there. And that's what happens when we do not go out into the land and to tell others about Christ, we start to get very settled in the harbor and we don't go out where we need to go. We don't want to be broken. We don't want to rot. We want to move and get to the areas to bring in the goods to the Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot save people. That's not our job. Our job is to tell people about Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the one who saves, but we're to bring the goods to him. And so we need to get our ships in motion. That's the arrangement that we are in. That's the position that we're in. We're very nice and cozy in the harbor, which is fine. We need to bring people into the harbor. But we also need to have an attitude, which we're going to discuss here in a few minutes, of getting out and presenting what the Lord Jesus Christ has done for us. That's bringing in the gold. That's bringing in the goods. That's why we are here. We have that mission to get out and tell others about Lord Jesus Christ. So I want to just show you a few things here about these ships. First of all, every one of us should have a plan to go. Every one of us should have a plan to go. Now, does that mean to go to Berlin? Probably not. Does that mean to go to South Africa? Probably not, or even to Papua New Guinea. I don't know what the Lord has for you, but we must have the heart attitude that I'm willing to go. And that means St. Louis. or Kansas City or whatever city you want to think of in the United States, but we must have the attitude, I'm ready to go. My mom used to use this saying a lot when I was growing up because she needed to talk to me a lot. Procrastination is the assassination of motivation. That's what unfortunately a lot of churches have as their banner. Procrastination is the assassination of motivation. We have a lot of people who know that they need to go and they make plans to go and they do all these things. I'm gonna go in the mission field, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna go door knocking on Thursday night or whatever night visitation, I'm gonna bring work on the bus route or whatever it is. But then all of a sudden at the very last minute, something comes up and they cancel. And then that plan to go ends. And so it dies off. And that's what we need to watch out for because if we procrastinate, we're not gonna be motivated. We need to be motivated in what the Lord Jesus Christ wants us to do and where to go. Secondly, we see here that a servant should have a heart or a place to go. You even heard in the prayer here tonight about going into your old Jerusalem. We have a place to go. It could be even your next door neighbor, but you have a place to go. Every one of us has a place to go. We need to leave the harbor and go to that place and to tell others about Christ. That's the whole idea here about as we follow the commandments of Jesus Christ when he says go. That wasn't a suggestion, that was a commandment. We need to go and we need to go out and to reach the world, which means we need to let go the ropes off the moors of our ship and go out on the seas and get out there. And then thirdly, we see here in these verses that a servant who does not follow God in their heart will perish. You will perish in the harbor. You will hear great messages, great singing specials, your heart will be stirred, but if you don't leave the harbor to tell others what Christ has done, then have you accomplished the mission that the Lord Jesus Christ wanted you to do? Because if we don't do it, then somebody else has to fill our spot. and we have a job that God wants us to do, let's fulfill that job. Yes, a ship is safe in the harbor, but that's not what we're built to do. We're built to go out on the seas. So I want to look at our attitude then. Okay, real quickly, I wanna look at our attitude. We're supposed to be obeying Christ and following the mission he has for us. Of course, very famous verse, Mark 16, verse 15, and he said unto them, going to all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. We know that verse, but are we doing it? Are we doing it? Okay, so that's the first part. So let's look at our attitude now. A lot of times in churches, you will say, well, we have the good intention to go out into the seas, to go out to tell other people about Christ. That's our attitude, but then it falls by the wayside. Why does that happen? Well, I want you to show you a story with the same kind of idea. Go to Mark chapter two, Mark chapter two. And I want to show you about these four men here in Mark chapter two. Mark chapter two, look here and starting in verse one. And again, he entered into Capernaum. This is speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ. After some days, there was noise that he was in the house. So Jesus Christ is coming to Capernaum. He's in this house, which I believe is Peter's house, but he's in his house and he's teaching, he's preaching. And people have heard that Jesus Christ is here and they wanna hear from him. They wanna hear what he is saying. And in verse two, it says, in a straight way, many were gathered together, insomuch that there was no room to receive them. No, not so much as about the door, and he preached the word unto them. So we have so many people at this house that they're packed in. You can't even get through the door. So many people are standing at the door. You can't even get by the windows because they're all standing by the windows so that you can hear what Jesus Christ is saying. So let's see what happens here. in verse three, and they come unto him bringing one sick of the palsy, which was born of four. So we see four men here are bringing somebody to Christ. They're fulfilling their mission. They're bringing this one sick of the palsy. This man can do nothing. He can't walk. He can't take care of himself. He can do nothing. And so these four men are bringing him to Christ. so that he can hear of him and be healed of him. So they're bringing this man to him, to Jesus. And it says here in verse four, and when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was, and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay. So here, I want you to see their attitude. Because this needs to be our attitude when we're dealing with bringing people to the Lord Jesus Christ. First of all, you see here that they were doing something that was very difficult. Okay, first of all, they had to carry this guy. And he wasn't a next door neighbor to where Jesus was speaking in his house. They probably had to carry him a long distance. And so these men got on the corners of this bed, and they carried him to this place in Capernaum. And so they had this difficult, but it wasn't just bringing him to Christ was difficult. Trying to get into the house was difficult. They couldn't go through the door, because there's so many people there. And I'm sure they asked him, excuse me, we want to try to bring this man in. And I'm sure they got some pretty weird looks at him, like, get away from me. So they tried windows. They couldn't get through the windows. But you notice here in the Bible, it doesn't say that they put the man down on the ground next to the house and said, we tried, but we couldn't get in. So be ye warmed and filled and walked away. That's not what they did. That's not what they said. They were still willing to do the difficult. And we, as Christians, we need to be willing to do the difficult. We need to go to our neighbors, who sometimes might not be as friendly as we'd like them to be. But we still have a job to do. We still need to let them know about Jesus Christ. Or our coworkers, or even closer to home, our family. But we have a job to do. We need to do the difficult. That needs to be our attitude. Whatever is out there for us to accomplish, let's have the attitude that's like, I'm gonna get this done for the Lord Jesus Christ. And also I want you to notice that they did something that no one else ever thought of before. They did something that was unorthodox. They didn't go through the door because there's so many people. They didn't go through the window because once again, there's so many people there. They went through the roof. They broke open the roof of this house, something that no one has ever done before. Now the Lord Jesus Christ knows exactly what's going on, but no one else knows what's going on. And later on here in this passage, it speaks of the Pharisees were in there listening to Jesus as well. And can you imagine all of a sudden they're sitting listening to Jesus and they're seeing little dust and dirt falling in front of them. And it's like, where is this coming from? And then they look up and they see a hole opening up in the roof. and more debris is falling down at their feet. And they're probably going, what in the world is going on? And all of a sudden they see this stretcher, this board come down with a man on it, right in front of Jesus Christ. See, these four guys did something that no one else has ever thought of. They did the unorthodox. We need to do the same thing today. We need to follow the principles of God's word, but why can't we use technology and other methods that are available today to get the gospel out to the lost? When I was in Germany, we were currently in lockdown. We're starting to ease the restrictions a little bit, but we're still in lockdown. All the stores, most of the stores are shut down. So when we try to get the gospel out, we try to hand out things, people won't take them from you because of COVID. They won't get close to you. So we had to think of another way. And I ran into a man, well, the Lord brought him into my path, who owns a print shop. And so I was able to speak with him. He printed out some tracks for me, some invitations, And then I said, yeah, I'm gonna try to go to the Deutsche Post and have them mail them out to the houses around our new church building. It's about 10,000 residents in that zip code. And he says, no, no, you don't wanna go through the Deutsche Post. They're way too expensive. To mail a letter in Germany, it's like 80 cents. And that's using euros, that's like a dollar a letter. And he goes, no, no, I got something better for you. And he knows a man who runs a delivery service, and he got us to be able to mail out 10,000 invitations for seven cents a letter. I didn't have to do anything. He printed them all. He stuffed them all. He gave them to this man, and this man delivered them for us. We have to think of ways that you get the gospel out that's outside the box, so to speak. Mailing out is not outside the box. However, it was the thing to do because of lockdown. We need to think of ways of telling other people about Christ. Think of the unorthodox. Think of those ways that we can do that. And then thirdly, I want you to notice one other thing that a lot of people, I think, overlook. They were willing to do the costly. This is an attitude that we need to have. They were willing to do the costly. Was this their house that they ripped up the roof? This wasn't their house. This was somebody else's house. Who's gonna repair that hole? Those four men were gonna repair that hole. They were willing to do that, to bring their friend to Christ. We have to be willing to do the costly. And costly means our time and our money to get the gospel out to the lost. This is the attitude that we need to have as we look in trying to get the word of God out to the lost world. This is what we need to do every single day. Do the difficult, do the unorthodox, and do the costly. That's the attitude that we need to have in our hearts. We need to leave the harbors and be willing to do whatever it takes to get the gospel out. So, now, what is our action? You're saying, well, I know I'm in the harbor. I know I need to leave the harbor. I understand that. And it's not easy to leave the harbor, and I understand that myself. It's not easy to leave and to go out in the open sea. But we need, as a commandment, to go in the open sea. And our attitude is, yes, we wanna touch as many of those lost people as we can to give the gospel to them and to bring them to Christ. That should be our attitude. I understand that. But let's get down to where the rubber meets the road now. What is our actions? How do we do that? What must we do to get these items accomplished? Why don't we use another familiar story in the Bible? Go to Acts chapter 12. Go to Acts chapter 12. This is the story of Peter when he's in prison. You remember that story? He's in prison and King Herod is gonna execute him because Peter is such a dangerous man. He did it because, or he wanted to do it because he wanted to look good in the eyes of the Jews. So he's gonna execute Peter, but he can't do it at this specific time because of the religious holiday of Easter. So he has to wait. And so he's putting it off a day. And so now we see here in Acts chapter 12 about Peter and what's going on. So let's look here in verse five. Peter therefore was kept in prison, but prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him. And right there is a whole nother message, praying of the church unceasingly all the time here. And in verse six, And when Herod would have brought him forth, the same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers bound with two chains, and the keepers before the door kept the prison." So we see here, Peter is chained up between two guards. Now these guards weren't wimpy men. These are some robust men. And he's chained between them. And there's a guard standing outside the door. That's why I know Peter was such a dangerous man. He had three guys over and outside the prison there's more guards. But here, what is Peter doing? He's about to be put to death. The next day he's gonna be beheaded. What's he doing? He's sleeping. He's at great peace. Why would we be at great peace knowing that we're gonna be put to death the next day? I don't know if I would be, to be quite honest with you. But Peter is sleeping because he knew that his job was not done yet on earth. He was still had something to do for God. And so he's in great peace, sleeping between these two soldiers. Now I want you to look on here in verse seven. And behold, the angel of the Lord came upon him, and a light shined in the prison, and he smote Peter on the side, and raised him up, saying, arise up quickly, and his chains fell off from his hands. Now, notice this one verse, because this is where the rubber meets the road for us. This is our actions, what we can do to get the gospel out. We see here that the angel came in and a bright light was shown, and probably that's why the two guards probably went off to the side. But you notice Peter didn't wake up. The angel had to kick him. Said, Peter, get up. He had to physically get him on the side and kick him. And then what happened here? He says, the angel told him, I'll rise up quickly. Could Peter, was Peter a handicapped person? Was his legs not workable? If I can put it that way. Did he have functional legs? Did he have a body that worked? Yes. And so when the angel told him, arise up quickly, that's exactly what Peter did. He immediately rose up. because he physically was able to do that. But next, what happened next when he did that? When he physically stood up, what happened? The chains fell off. So what does that tell us? Let's do what we can do. Peter can stand up. That was something that he could do. But could Peter take those chains off his hands? that was impossible for him to do. There's no way he could get those chains off. But when he did what he could do, and he did it immediately, what happened? The impossible happened. We do the possible, God does the impossible. Can we not go next door and talk to our neighbors? Can we not talk to our family members or do something unorthodox with the media somehow to get the gospel out? Can we not do that? Let's do the possible. Don't worry about what's gonna happen down the road. That's not our problem. Our problem is to do what God wants us to do. And then when God tells us to do something, we do it immediately. Don't hem and haw about it. If the Holy Spirit's telling you to do something during this week, do it. Don't wait. Because there's something right around the corner for you. And you're gonna see the impossible happen. But you need to do it immediately, like Peter did. Peter rose up and the chains fell off. Well, we'll see more examples here. Let's read on, verse eight. And the angel said unto him, gird thyself and bind on thy sandals. And so he did. And he said unto him, cast thy garment about thee and follow me. Are these things that Peter could do? Yeah, he can put his coat on. He can put his sandals on. He could follow the angel. Those are things that he was able to do. Those are possible things. So when he did that, and notice again, he did it immediately, he didn't have a little discussion with the angel, like saying, I was sleeping really good. Why did you wake me up? No, he did it right away, and look what happens now in verse nine. And he went out and followed him, and wist not that it was true which was done by the angel, but thought he saw a vision. When they were past the first and second ward, they came unto the iron gate that leadeth unto the city, which opened to them of his own accord. And they went out and passed on through one street, and forwith the angel departed from him. When he immediately followed the angel, what happened? The cell doors, the iron gate opened up by Peter just pushing on it. Could Peter do that physically? No. Not a chance. He couldn't open those gates. But when he followed and obeyed the commands that he was given, doing the things that he could do, The impossible was accomplished, and the gates opened up. And then he went on to the streets, and notice what happened. Well, we're not gonna read on because of time, but what happened next? Peter goes to the church where they're praying for him. You notice he didn't go to his house. He didn't go down somewhere where he can run away from the guards and hide. No, he went to where they were praying for them. That is the attitude that we need to have. That's how we put our actions to work. We know that we're in this harbor and we have a job to do. And we need to leave the harbor and go out in the open ocean and then bring in the goods back to the harbor. We know that. And our attitude is, let's do it. Let's find ways of doing it. Let's get out there and do it. Even if it costs me a great deal, I'm willing to do it. Let's go do that. But where the rubber meets the road, like I said before, is now go do it. Do the possible. Do what you can. God understands that there's some limitations of you. God understands that you can't do everything, but that's why we have lots of people in the harbor. One person does their part, another person does their part, and guess what? The mission gets accomplished. Remember I said in the beginning, our Air Force mission, was for the protection of the country. But my little mission was to get the airplanes out and back again. Let's do our little part. I can't reach where you're living. I can't go out there and I can knock on doors, but they're looking at your life. You have a relationship where you're living. They know who you are. You have a better chance of bringing them into this harbor than I do. So let's accomplish that and let God do the impossible. Don't worry about what this should happen, this, that. Let God take care of that. You just do what you can do and we will see the mission accomplished. John Wesley said this, I want the whole Christ for my Savior, the whole Bible for my book, and the whole world for my mission field. That's a good attitude to have. Now there's some things I disagree with John Wesley, but that's a good statement. That's the idea that we need to have in our lives while we're here in this harbor. We need to see what we can do and let God do the impossible. Don't be afraid of those who mock the Bible or things of God. Don't be afraid of that. Just remember, they're not yelling at you, they're yelling at God. And if they don't come to the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, then they're gonna have to be accountable for that. You're gonna be accountable for giving them the gospel. That's what we need to be looking out for. So, we have a mission. Our mission is to obey Christ, sharing Christ, and relying on Christ. It might be going out in the mission field. That's a possibility. But don't let that stop you. You say, Lord, whatever you want me to do, I'll do. And follow these steps that we talked about here tonight, and you will be able to accomplish the mission. Because God has a special purpose for you. Follow these things, and you will see the mission accomplished. Pastor.