When I pastored in southwest Missouri, there was a high school girl in our church. She was an upperclassman. Her name was Sarah. Sarah was a brilliant girl. I can't remember if it was economics or accounting, but it had something to do with math and numbers. And I was real impressed with her because, again, she was an impressive young lady. She's one of the best economics, accounting students, whatever, in the nation. It was amazing to see how kind of like if there's an athlete, a basketball player or a football player in high school that has potential to play in the NBA or the NFL. It's amazing how she was recruited, how colleges wanted her, how businesses were already attempting to seek her out. And she won some national award. Again, I think she's like the top three accounting students or something like this in the nation as a high school student. And she went all expenses paid to some really plush hotel in Chicago. They put her up. Put her in the hotel. She stayed great meals, all these companies, all these universities trying to reach out to her. Pretty, pretty amazing stuff. And I remember her dad, John, who was one of the deacons in our church that time, he called her on the phone. She was there in Chicago. Of course, there was adult leadership and supervisors there and stuff and called her and said, Sarah, how are you doing now? Here she is, her future in front of her. Great, young, brilliant. young woman, job, future money, career, all those sort of things in front of her. He said, Sarah, how are you doing? And from inside of her hotel room in Chicago, she said this, I'm doing great, Dad, but I sure miss Africa. Sarah, we had a partnership with Uganda, Africa, the church I pastored then, and Sarah had just spent two or three weeks in Africa. And she was missing the heat and humidity. She was missing sleeping under a net. She was missing the fear of malaria. She was missing about being sick. She was missing going to the bathroom in a hole that they dug in a shovel outside of the camp. But she says, man, I miss Africa. Now, don't misunderstand this. There is nothing wrong with getting a great education and being a successful business person in accounting or something like that. Matter of fact, just the opposite. God puts us in those places to be his missionaries in those places of business. And that's not what Sarah meant. And there's nothing, nothing wrong with that at all. And this isn't about that. You're supposed to everyone's supposed to quit, quit your job, go to Africa. Now, we all are to go to Africa through our prayers. We're all to go to Africa through our sending. And some people will go to Africa and come back. Some people will go to Africa and stay. That's not what Sarah meant when Sarah made that statement. It just showed her heart. She had a heart for the Great Commission. We're all to have a heart for the Great Commission. As we saw this morning, that what we talked about this morning, life's mission is missions that magnify Jesus to the world. Our Lord is on mission to this planet, and we have the privilege and the blessing of joining him in his mission to this planet. Matter of fact, believers, that's what we all share. All of us have the same call, and that call is the Great Commission. Every single one of us. We have the call. We're all missionaries. Every day is a mission trip. Everyone we meet is our mission field. We've talked about that a lot. It's been well said before we were saved, the message of Jesus was come. We were to go to him, come to him for salvation. But after we're saved, the messages go. We come to him before we were saved for salvation. We go for him after we're saved to share the good news of salvation. Here's the issue. It is possible to really be a Christian. but not have the Great Commission burned into our heart. I was there for a number of years and I'm not saying I've arrived now in that area of my life, but it's very possible to be a believer born again, saved, but really not have the Great Commission burned into our hearts. That's why every once in a while, from time to time, we need to recast the vision. We need to feed and fuel our passion for missions. That's why I love G.I.C. G.I.C. is just a time as a church family where we come together and refuel our hearts for missions. Jesus is 100 percent committed to his name, to his mission, to his glory. And G.I.C. is a time that it stirs our heart to also be committed to that mission. Here's what God laid on my heart to do in our remaining time together. This is a different message than I normally preach. Ninety nine point nine percent of the time. I'm going to take one passage of scripture and stay with that passage of scripture, and we're going to dive into that passage of scripture where tonight we're actually going to look at five different scriptures. Now, if Jesus tells us something one time, it's enough. But if Jesus tells us something five times, he really wants to get across to us. Here's what I want you to see. Do you know that Jesus gave the Great Commission five different times? Five different times, just to make it clear, Jesus gave us the Great Commission. Now, these five Great Commissions, they're all in God's word. They're all a command. These five great commissions, every one of them came from the mouth of Jesus himself. And these five great commissions are all found in the first five books of the New Testament. There's one in Matthew, one in Mark, one in Luke, one in John and one in the book of Acts. When you put these five great commissions together, the five great commissions of Jesus, it gives us an overall picture of the call that you and I have on our lives. And what we are to declare and what we are to display as we go for him, as we just, again, feed and fuel our passion for missions in this G.I.C. And I want to just jump in and go and look at these five great commissions and what they teach us. You're going to have to let your fingers do the walking a little bit through the pages of your Bible. We're going to look at Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts, the five great commissions. Are you ready to go? OK, here we go. Number one, the first great commission is Matthew 28 versus 18 through 20. In our mission, we have all power. I want us to see that in our mission, we have all power. Matthew 28, 18 through 20 says this. Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things I've commanded you and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. We have all power after the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. He gave every church and every Christian our marching orders, which is this the Great Commission. You see, at First Baptist Church Arnold, we are on a committed journey to take the gospel to the ends of the earth to do everything that we need to do in missions. We must have supernatural power. I mean, we can have organization and we should we can strategize and we should we can train as we should. But church, if we do not have God's power, we can forget it. The great news is we got it. Jesus is alive and the power of his life is in us by his Holy Spirit. It said in verse 18, all authority has been given to me. We have all the power we need in the Spirit's power. We have the great joy of living our lives like Jesus is alive and then allowing his life to live through us. to take the gospel to the lost. When we yield to the power of the spirit in our lives, he will deepen our burden for missions. He will also give us a greater boldness for the missions that we have. If we want a deeper burden and a greater a deeper burden and a greater boldness to share our faith, it has to come through the spirit's power. When we realize we have all power, it can overcome all the fear that we may have to do things and missions. When we realize that we have all power, it will infuse the efforts that we do with the effectiveness through his power. Again, we have all power. He says all authority has been given to me. All we have to do is to avail ourselves to it. So as you go on mission locally, as you go on mission around the world, as we do missions as a church family, we have all the power we need to be successful in that. Our mission's pastor from India. You saw the video about India recently, Nazir Masih. He told the story at First Baptist Chandigarh when they were building the school. And the school is one of the strategic things that we have there to try to take the gospel to this unreached people group. Over fourteen hundred students in the school right now. Thank you, First Baptist Church Arnold. You sponsor somewhere around one hundred and fifty of those children. They get a meal, a uniform, a great education in Jesus every single day of their lives. And they represented in that school. many of those who are from unreached people groups. When they were building the school, the school was heavily persecuted. Hindus in the area began to throw rocks at the workers, trying to drive them away from building the school. Well, what Nazir and the other leaders did, they built a little wall to separate the workers from the community, the Hindus there who were throwing rocks. Well, it didn't stop the Hindus. They continued to throw rocks. They continued to persecute the workers. Finally, Nazir, he knew the woman in the in the neighborhood who was instigating all this persecution towards the workers and towards the Christians. He went to her in boldness and he told her, he said, you had better stop throwing the rocks because we serve the all powerful God. It was like a day later, she was lighting her oven in her apartment and the oven blew up. The rock throwing stopped. We serve the all-powerful God of the universe. And when we go on mission for him, he is working in us. He's working through us. He's working ahead of us. He's working around us. Sometimes as believers, we can tend to forget his power. We live in a day and age where we say, oh, look what the world is coming to. Look what the world is coming to. Look what the world is coming to. Like we're all to hunker down and be scared if you watch the news. Look what the world is coming to us. Carl Henry said, may we stop focusing on look what the world is coming to, but let's look what's coming to the world. His name is Jesus. He's coming to the world. We have all power in him. He's here. We have all authority in our mission. We have all power. Let's go to the second Great Commission. It's in Mark's gospel. Jesus said it once. He said it twice in Mark gospel, chapter 16, verse 15. In our mission, we go to all people. We go in all power and we go to all people. Mark 16 15 says this, and he said to them, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. God's purpose is to be known and worshiped by all nations on this earth. He desires all races, all tongues, all tribes to be his. The Bible says whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. God's purpose is for every believer and all believers from every age and all ages to go to all people. God loves all people. Jesus died for all people. The Holy Spirit empowers the church to go to all people all around us, all over the world. God is building his church. It will not fail. Jesus said in Matthew 16, 18, that I will build my church and the gates of Haiti shall not prevail against it. There's never been a day like the day we are living in today where the gospel is going out all over the world. Pastor Bob and I mentioned before earlier this year had a chance to spend some time in Southern California with different missions groups and some churches and parachurch ministries like Whitcliffe Bible translators and and on and on and on and report after report. There's never been a day where God is opening doors all over the world to go to all people, those unreached, unengaged people groups. Now, at First Baptist Arnold, our goal is to be involved in five unreached, unengaged people groups in our first decade. We're about four years into that, and we currently have three, the K people in West Africa, the Jut Sikhs in North India and Vancouver. And then as we just saw the mountains of their of Central Mexico, what's an incredible thing is not only do we go to all people there, all people are here. We experience you just heard from Pastor Rico. We know in St. Louis, I don't know if this is still the same number, but there's something like 70 languages spoken in St. Louis. We go to all people because there's going to come a day as we go to all people, when God and his sovereign plan understands in Matthew 24, 14, this gospel, the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all nations. And then the end will come. We go to anybody, anywhere and everybody, everywhere. Just this past week, we had an opportunity with our ministry. Thank you, Travis and Ginger and their class and who took upon themselves and others joined in of taking furniture to refugees. And we got to help with that a little bit. It was Marty and Sherry Rowland and Barry Freiner and Dustin, my son and Donna and myself. We had a chance to go and take some furniture to a family from Nepal. And I thought about that I had traveled 16 hours on a plane before to preach through a translator in Chandigarh, India, to a Nepalese church, and we drove 16 miles to go to a family from Nepal right here in St. Louis, a refugee family, and deliver furniture to them in Jesus' name. We go to all people. We go to all people to the ends of the earth, and we go to all people that are around us every single day. This is our mission. We go in His power. We have all power. We go to all people. Look at the third Great Commission in Luke's Gospel, chapter 24, verses 46 through 49. In our mission, it's our life priority. Jesus gave the Great Commission a third time, and in our mission, it's our life priority, Luke 24, 46 through 49. He said to them, thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for Christ to suffer, to rise from the dead the third day, that repentance and remissions of sins should be preached in his name to all nations beginning in Jerusalem. And you are witnesses of these things. There's a third great commission. It says should be preached the way it's worded there. It means do it. It's the theme of our conference obedience. We are to be his hands, be his heart and be his voice again from time to time. We all need to check our heart when it comes to evangelism and missions. One of the greatest things I love to hear as a pastor, when I hear that someone has said or someone says to me, I think we emphasize missions too much at church. I go, yes. Thank you, Lord, because if we don't overemphasize it, it will not be emphasized enough. We want our passion and our vision for missions here to our neighbors and to the nations. We want it fresh and not fading. Again, we need the mission strategies, we need the mechanics of missions, but most important is our motivation. There just comes a time we can debate things in church life. Are we are is a consumerism or contextualization? Is it being a program or is it doing this? Is it? Is it being missional or being attractional? Well, all I know is sometimes you just got to get off your seat, out of your seat and go out on the street and do something for someone in Jesus name. And it's to be a priority in our life. And thank you, churches. We said this morning, thank you for your missions effort. Thank you for for what you're doing. Remember what we said this morning, what John Stott said about going for the sake of his name. It should crush our hearts that people ignore and don't know the name of Jesus. Again, we love him. He loves us and our heart longs for the world to love him. Jesus said in Luke 1910, what was the priority of Jesus life? The son of man has come to seek and to say that which is lost. His priority is our priority. Why he came is why we go for the sake of his name. We seek the lost. We go to John's gospel. There's a fourth Great Commission in our mission. We go in all power in our mission. We go to all people in our mission. We go as a priority. Look at the fourth Great Commission. Jesus gave it to us five times in John, chapter 20, verse 21. In our mission, we go at a price. We're willing to pay a price. Verse 21 says, So Jesus said to them again, peace to you. And here's the great commission. As the father has sent me, I also send you. Jesus is saying the way that the father sent me on my mission of going to the cross is the way that I am sending you to go to the world. Well, how did the father send Jesus? Jesus came at sacrifice and he paid a price. He left the glories of heaven to be born in a manger, to be rejected by his people, to be beaten, falsely accused, arrested, to be crucified on a cross and praise his name. He arose from the grave. He says, I'm sending you the same way. He says, I'm sending you as my church and as my people to be people of sacrifice, people who are willing to pay a price. And you're praying, you're giving, you're loving, you're sending, you're going. This lost world needs believers who are willing to be sent the way that Jesus was sent, and we are the sent ones. I heard a story of a guy who was crying out to God and said, God, there is so much injustice in the world. There is so much hurt in the world, so much darkness in the world. God, why don't you send some help? And God responded. I did send some help. I sent you. And we're all sent. You see, we didn't pay anything for the gospel. The gospel didn't cost us anything. It cost Jesus everything. But the spread of the gospel is to cost us everything. Listen to this. The price we pay in sharing the cross is a presentation of the price Jesus paid on the cross. Let me say it again. The price we pay in sharing the cross is a presentation of the price Jesus paid on the cross. So if we're not willing to pay much of a price to spread the cross, we're really saying that Jesus didn't pay much of a price on the cross for us. But the price we pay in sharing the cross is a presentation of the price Jesus paid on the cross. Whatever price we pay, it's worth it. The lost are worth the cost. We go at a price as the father sent me. He said, I send you Dr. Bernard Holmes. Some of you SBU folks here will remember Dr. Bernard Holmes. He is one of the mentors in my life. He is from New Zealand. You know, if you've got that New Zealand or that British accent, you automatically sound like you're 20 IQ points smarter than everybody else. He was really that smart. He was from New Zealand. He was the professor of discipleship at Southwest Baptist University. And for some crazy reason that I did not deserve, he took an interest in me. He recently went home or he's home now with the Lord. This is an email that I got a prayer request from Dr. Holmes. This was back in 2007. First, his wife, Joyce, she has had a light day with only two stabs of pain, but as the headache localized on top of her head yesterday, she had several stabs of pain, which is so unpredictable. She had an appointment with a neurologist next Tuesday. For Dr. Holmes, Bernard, his pain is predictable, being constant, except when he lies on his back. He does not sleep well on his back at all. Worse still are the pain tablets that give him very little relief. We're waiting for scheduling a nurse to tell him of the time of his MRI. So both of them in pain, both the medical stuff going on. Here's the next paragraph. Our schedule for this Sunday is the same as last week. Bernard will preach at nine o'clock at Faith Southern Baptist Church in Marshville. Then he'll lead the closing session of a discipleship conference at Calvary Baptist in Buffalo, Missouri, 18 miles away. I remember when he had some cancer cut out of his back and as soon as he could with a big bandage on his back, he was in his 70s. He got on a plane to go to Russia for the gospel. I remember being in India with him when he was in his 70s after some sort of a stroke. He had partial paralysis in his hand and in part of his leg and with his hand and able to move and dragging his one foot in his 70s. He went all over North India telling people about the gospel. He absolutely kept serving Jesus, paying a price for the gospel until Jesus called him home and he went out with a smile on his face. Because in our mission, the way the father sent him, sent Jesus the way we've been sent, we go at a price. I love our senior adults in this church. It is a true statement that we retire from our jobs, but I want to let you know something. We never retire from serving Jesus. We never retire from our mission. We may get to a point health wise where we can pray. And we can send and support. And that is every bit as important as those who are boots on the field. We're one church, one body doing that. But we never retire from paying a price for Christ. Well, there's one more to go. Jesus gave the Great Commission five times. We go with all power. We go to all people. We go as a priority. We go at a price. And finally, the Book of Acts, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Jesus said, I've given it to you four times. Let me give it to you a fifth time, because this is who my people are to be about. This is what my church is to be about. Number five, the fifth Great Commission, the Book of Acts, chapter one, verse eight. We go by following God's plan. We go by following God's plan. Acts 1 8 says again, the words of Jesus, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. See, we have God's mission plan. We go to all places. It makes sense. If we're going to go to all people, we've got to go to all places. And I'm sure you've heard before. Look at the places. Look at God's plan for missions in verse eight from Jesus himself. We go to Jerusalem. That's our local area. And don't ask me why, but our local area is the hardest. You know, it's we can share with someone on a street in India we may never see again in our life. But boy, when you work next to someone every day of your life, when it's a family member, Jerusalem can be the hardest place to be on mission. We go to Judea. Judea represents the region or the nation. We have our local area and we have our region in our nation. Samaria, you know why Samaria is there? To the Jews, Samarians were worse than dogs. If you were a Samaritan, you were worse than a dog. This reminds us that we go to those even that are hated. So you can't get to the ends of the earth until you go through Samaria. There is no one outside the gospel, those that our culture and our world may hate the most, those that we may have the greatest difficulty with. We even go to them. We go from Jerusalem to Judea, and then it finally says, you see, in Acts one, eight to the ends of the earth, we must embrace an ever engaging life of intentionally touching other people for Jesus. But we must also embrace an ever expanding mission life. Let me say that again. We must embrace an ever engaging mission life, but we must also embrace an ever expanding mission life. Verse eight is an ever expanding circle. Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria to the ends of the earth. We must never be a one circle church or a one circle Christian. Well, I'm just going to care about Jerusalem, but not about the ends of the earth, or I'm just going to care about the ends of the earth, but not Jerusalem. It's not either or. Every preacher knows one of the most dangerous person in a church is what I call a one agenda person. And sometimes it can be a good thing. There are people who are so passionate about their ministry. There's a ministry that touch their heart and they're so passionate about, you know, someplace internationally or someplace locally or ministering the church that they think that every that I ought to come up here every Sunday and just talk about that one ministry, that that's the ministry of the church and everything else is secondary to it. And we become a one circle Christian, a one circle church. Granted, God may call us to one area of passion. But hear me, we're an ever expanding circle. We're never a one-circle person. It's all four at the same time, church. At the same time, we have a passion for our local area. At the same time, we have a passion for our nation. At the same time, we have a passion for the ends of the earth. God may not call each of us to actually go to all those places, but we care about all those places. Does that make sense? I know churches that say, we've got enough lost people around here. Why do we need to go to the ends of the earth? I think, you ignorant person, do you ever even read your Bible? There's no other biblical option. We have an option. Ends of the earth or disobedience. That's it. But guess what? The ends of the earth are here and the ends of the earth are there. This is God's plan, an ever expanding circle of Jerusalem, of Judea, of the ends of the earth, praying, loving, giving, going, all part of God's plan to expand to all people in all places. I wish there was a sixth one because I have to stop at five, but there's only five. How's your mission for Jesus, how's mine? Remember what we said today. Thank you for these two pieces of missions at a glance. Thank you for reading about the how do I go and how do I give and praying about where God wants you to serve and what missions he wants you to be a part of and and the faith commitment offering beyond the tie. Thank you for all that praying about that. And most of all, I pray that you come to Jesus. Jesus loves you. Five different times he tells his people that we're to go to those who don't know Christ. And if you don't know Christ, he loves you and he wants to change your life. He went to the cross to make it possible if you would just simply come to him tonight and how I pray at the end of this G.I.C. that we're going to commit in a fresh new way with the Lord as our helper to be a praying, loving, serving, giving, sending church for him. We have all power. We go to all people. It is our absolute priority. We go at a price and we follow his plan locally to the ends of the earth, ever engaging, ever expanding circles of missions. Let me show you two ladies from Iran. I'm probably going to slaughter their names. The lady with the short hair there is 34 years old. Her name is Amiri, Amiri Zadeh, Amiri Zadeh. And the woman with the longer hair next to her is 31. Her name is Ross Tampour. They're from Iran. These two ladies were arrested and thrown in prison for practicing Christianity in Iran. And they were guilty when the authorities burst into their apartment. They ran an underground church in their apartment. They were sharing the gospel with rich people and prostitutes, anyone they could find in Iran. The authorities found 20,000 Bibles in their apartment. These two young ladies were thrown in prison and prison in Iran is a harsh place. They were deprived of many of the lot of life's basic needs. They were very sick. They were constantly threatened with death. They literally starved themselves because they were giving their food away to people who were sick. who needed nutrition worse than they did. But they were also on mission inside that horrible prison in Iran, they shared the gospel with many, many people, matter of fact, their testimony was this, that the greatest ministry in Iran didn't take place in their apartment and didn't take place in the streets. It took place when God allowed him to go to prison. I want to show you a photo of what authorities found on their wall when they broke into their apartment. I'm going to leave this up for a moment. What you see there is a map. Of Tehran, how do you say Tehran, Tehran? What is it, Iran? What's the big capital city, Tehran? What is it? It's OK to speak up. Yeah, Iran. This was this was a map. This was a map in their apartment. These two women had mapped out their entire city in every place you see a circle and you see a little cross, that's a place where they would walk and distribute Bibles. They distributed tens of thousands of Bibles over a three year period, walking in horrible weather, knowing that authorities were watching them, knowing that what could happen if they were caught. And they had such a passion to reach their community in their city. They put this, these young women put this map on their wall, their 20,000 Bibles. You could see the pictures that they glued of different places where they were trying to start Bible studies and and the crosses and the Bibles that they distributed all over Their area. It says this in a in a World Magazine article about him, it says the hand drawn circles and crosses showed all the places the women had distributed Bibles for nearly two years, they walked the streets quietly, slipping New Testament to the mailboxes all over the city. When they think about the miles they walk, sometimes through snow, they did not mention fatigue or fear. We had passion. One of the ladies says we were following. Our dream. World magazine said when they were first arrested, the rough Iranian police, these two women. Being brutal to them, persecuting them, arresting them in their apartment with the map and the 20,000 Bibles. Said you are going to stop handing out Bibles and you are going to stop telling people about Jesus. And one of the ladies said this, we put their photo up again, guys, throw you a loop that we put their photo up again. They don't look like the type that would say this, do they? But one of the ladies said this, quote, Look, that policeman right in his face. Until you cut out my tongue, I will keep feeding people who have a hunger for truth about Jesus Christ. You know, we hear stories like that in Iran, and that's so far from us as Americans, this isn't about making us feel guilty. It's about making us be responsible with how blessed we are. Church, thank you. Thank you for having a heart for the gospel. Thank you for having a heart for Jesus. Thank you for having a heart for missions. What else are we going to give our life to? Let's pray. Father, we love you. And we thank you that you have given us the great commission, not once, not twice, not three times, not four times, but five times. There can be no doubt that you want it crystal clear, crystal clear what we're to be about. And we thank you for that. We thank you that you're on mission to this planet. And we have the privilege of joining you in that mission. As we saw this morning through our relationship with you, Jesus, we have the precious, precious blessing of tapping our life into your eternal purpose. Thank you that as we do things and missions, we have all power. We're called to all people. It's our priority. We're willing to pay any price and we want to follow your plan. of an ever expanding circle, local to the ends of the earth, not either or, but both and equally passionate about both. Lord, I pray that right now, if there's someone here that has never said yes to you, that they would say yes to you now as Savior. And Lord, I pray that for those of us who are here again, those prayers about God, where do you want me to go? Where do you want me to serve locally, internationally? God, what about the faith commitment offering? Lord, what about baptism? What about church membership? Lord, that you would just penetrate our hearts with that. We love you so much. We ask it in Jesus name.