When I was doing my notes this time, I made the mistake of doing them all on the PowerPoint. And as you know, I have problems with the clicker. So Brother Robert, as far as I know, is going to be changing the clicker for us, changing the slides. Anyway, let's read our scripture, Acts 1-4-9, and I'm going to see if I can read it off the screen. Would you stand with me as we read this scripture from the Word of God? Acts 1-4-9. and being assembled together with them, he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, you have heard from me, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. Now, when he had spoken these things, while they watched, and a cloud received them out of their sight. Let's pray. Father, this is the time when we look to your word and I pray that your Holy Spirit would convict us and convince us and encourage us today to be your witnesses from our Jerusalem all the way to the ends of the earth. and that you would bless this service tonight and may you be honored and glorified in Jesus name, amen. You may be seated. Y'all excuse me, one of my medicines makes me have dry mouth and so I may have to stop and get a drink once in a while. Hopefully it won't be counted against me like it was Senator Rubio a few years ago when he made a speech. I chose the subject Mission Impossible for this sermon today. Most of us, I'm sure, have seen The TV program, Mission Impossible. It was on for a long time. And then there were, I don't know how many movies they made with Tom Cruise. I don't think I've ever seen any of the movies. So I'll just have to depend on the TV series. But you will remember, if you watch those, how the mission leader would receive a recording that would tell him what the mission was. And that mission would be a seemingly impossible mission. And after he had listened to the mission recording, it was self-destruct. And then he would start calling members of his team and they would get organized and they would begin their work to accomplish the mission. And on the TV series, at least, on their mission impossible, they never failed. They always succeeded. Well, we're talking about another mission this morning that was given to us by our savior, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who was the second person of the Holy Trinity, the God who was from eternity, the God who spoke the worlds into existence, Jesus Christ. And so, as we have read these scriptures this morning, I've got four points that we want to look at. Well, I think I added another point that I didn't put here, but the presentation of the mission that Jesus Christ gave to his disciples there on the Mount of Olives. And then there was the promise of mission and the plan of mission and the power of mission. Now, I'm going to try to go through these very quickly. Now, you know how that goes when preachers say that. But the presentation of mission, Jesus Christ had his disciples, the 11, and he was giving them their last final instructions, and then he was caught up into heaven, and they were on their own. No, they weren't on their own. God was going to be with them. During the 40 days from his death to his resurrection and his ascension, there were 40 days and he demonstrated to them the infallible, the unmistakable proofs that he was God, the Almighty, the one that had appeared to Abraham and to Moses and to all the rest of the prophets. and he convinced them of who he was. And he shared with them the truth and the reality of his resurrection and how his kingdom was going to be established on this earth. And so Jesus Christ is the one. So point number one, the promise of his mission. And in that promise, he gave them, he first gave them a command. And the command was for them to wait, to wait in the city of Jerusalem, wait for the coming down of the Holy Spirit who would empower them and help them to be able to carry out the mission. And so the command was to wait. Now that's one of the hardest commands that we have as Christians and as people. We like to do things immediately. We like to do it right now. But when I think about waiting, My favorite verse in all the Bible, there's many of them, but my favorite verse is Isaiah chapter 40, verses 28 through 31. He said, have you not known, have you not heard the everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth? Neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the weak. And to those who have no might, he gives strength. Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. they shall walk and not faint. And that is the waiting. And then the promise of his mission. He told them that they would be baptized in the Holy Spirit. Acts chapter two, not many days from now, he said, you will receive the empowering of the Holy Spirit. He will come down, he will be with you, he will be in you, he will guide you, he will give you the strength and the power that you need. And so that was God's, we believe, God's promise to every believer. that when we are saved by the grace of God, when we are born again, then God the Holy Spirit comes into our hearts and lives within us to guide us, to encourage us, to empower us. And that is what happened. First Corinthians chapter 12 verse 13 says, for by one spirit, we were all baptized into one body and have all been made to drink into one spirit. And so this is the wonderful promise that we have. Sadly, it is a promise that has been abused and misused by so many people today in the so-called Christian world. we do believe and know that Jesus, that the Holy Spirit is with each and every one of us. Point number two, the plan of mission. Jesus made it clear in this final word. He had given what we call the great commission in several other places in Mark and Matthew and Luke even. But here in Acts chapter one, verse eight, he said, you shall be witnesses to me both in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. That was the command. And that was the plan that his disciples would spread out from Jerusalem, from that little nucleus of apostles and disciples that they would go out to the end of the earth to carry the message of the gospel. Now, when we read that and when we hear that, it's kind of scary because the impossibility of the plan, how would this be possible? Because look at these guys that he was commissioning and sending out to accomplish the mission were number one Jews. And one of the reasons that Jesus spent 40 days after his burial and resurrection and before his ascension was to empower, to guide, to direct, to teach his disciples about the mission and what they were supposed to do. But we know that these guys were looked upon as being ignorant and uneducated. How could they accomplish a task like this? But, We also know that after his death, after his arrest, that they were hiding in an upper room. These were guys who had a problem, afraid, but Jesus commanded them to go. And it was an impossible mission because of the immensity of the task. And as we here in this, Little group of people here this morning. We must understand that Jesus, when he spoke these words and gave this mission to these disciples, he was also giving it to us, to you and me, to every single one of us. that we are to carry the mission to the ends of the earth, even though it's an immense task. The plan of missions, the necessity of the plan, because we live in a big world, I don't know if you ever think about it, but sometimes when I'm out in crowds and a lot of people, I think that every single one of these people, including myself, one day is going to leave this world and go into the next world. that God has prepared for us. We believe the Bible, what the Bible says, that there's only two choices. You can choose to believe in Jesus Christ, receive eternal life, and spend eternity in heaven with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Not believe in Jesus. The other alternative is terrible. So that's the necessity of the plan. A world of lost sinners. Now when you've been privileged as Barbara and I have to travel to a lot of different parts of the world I think of our trips to China, to Burma, the Philippines, India, to see the multitudes of people. And I think that without Jesus Christ and the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, All of those people have no hope. Ephesians chapter two verses 11 through 13. Therefore remember that at that time you were without Christ being aliens from the common covenants of promise having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. All those people have no hope except through Jesus Christ. And our joy has been to be able to travel to those other countries and see God's faithful servants who have, like those 11 disciples on the Mount of Olives, when Jesus ascended back to heaven, today, they have enthusiastically received the gospel of Jesus Christ, and they're taking it, taking that message to a lost and dying world. things that blesses our hearts, despite the fact that we don't have a big congregation in our English speaking church here. But we have the Tamil and the Telugu congregations meeting here, preaching the gospel, winning souls. That's the plan that God has left for us. Then the power of mission, quickly, the power that God provided made the mission possible. The power is none other than the power of the Holy Spirit. His power changed those helpless, fearful disciples into daring, effective witnesses for Jesus Christ. And just a couple of examples, you turn to Acts chapter three. You have the example of Peter preaching and healing a man, and that man being transformed and encouraged. Acts 4.13, where Peter and John were arrested, and they looked at them, and they saw that they were ignorant and unlearned men, but they perceived that they had been with Jesus. That makes all the difference. in our lives today. And then in Acts chapter eight, there was a great persecution against the disciples of the early church, but that was God's way of causing them to spread out and go into other areas. And so as they were scattered, they witnessed and they won lost souls. And then there is the perpetuity of mission. Well, the commission, the task, the mission that Jesus gave to his disciples Mission Impossible still looks that way to us. Even here in America, a country that was founded by godly people who believed in this God and they spread the word and God blessed. But today, in America, we've lost our way, by and large. But I told you that early in my ministry, in my preaching, in fact, the third little church I pastored was Friendship Baptist Church in Mount Pleasant, Texas. It was a country church about three miles outside the city limits of Mount Pleasant. And this young preacher, Barbara and I had surrendered our lives to go to the mission field. We didn't know how, when, or where, but God as a way of making those things known to us. So in 1961, well actually 1960, we were appointed or elected as missionaries to Taiwan by our churches. And we went to Taiwan And that first term, two years in language school, learning the Chinese language, it started down in the middle of the island of Taiwan, started a church. And bought property, bought land, and built a church building. In May of 1966, we left for our first furlough. Our second term, we returned to Taiwan in 1967, May or June. And during that four-year term, we continued to work with the Gospel Baptist Church that we had started there in the city of Taichung. The third term came along. That was 1972 to 1973, I guess. But when we had returned after our second furlough, I decided it was time because our first church had a good start, they had their own pastor, they were doing well. So we decided it's time to start another church. We began to pray that God would lead us to the right place, and to the right people. I heard about a new housing development up on the northern outskirts of the city of Taichung, which at that time was a city of about 400 to 500,000 people. And I know that's small by today's standards, but one day, After I heard the news about that new housing development, I said, well, maybe that's where God is sending us. So I drove my 1971 Mitsubishi minicar. I'm giving y'all some details y'all don't really need to know, but my 1971 Mitsubishi minicar. The minicar had a two-stroke engine. an air-cooled 359cc engine that had a powerful engine of 17 horsepower. And we had some good times in that little mini car with me and Barbara and Judy and Belinda and Andrew all packed in. But that day I was just myself alone. And I went up north, came to the street or road where that new housing development was. I turned in. As I turned in, I was praying to the Lord, if this is the place you want to send us, then help me to know. And so as I entered and drove down, and the road was not paved yet, it had been raining, and they were working on the road and so forth, and as I came down, about 200 yards past the main highway. There was this one building, you can see it in the picture there, two storefronts side by side, built together with an alley on one side, the main street on the front, a big drainage ditch on the other side. And I thought, maybe that's the one that God wants us to have. So I stopped, and it just so happened that the contractor, a Mr. Fu, was there that day. And we struck up a conversation. I told him who I was, why I was there. that I was looking for a place to start a new church. Well, Mr. Fu told me he was a Christian. And this housing development, they had started it, and then after they started it, this is about 1972, And the time when the prices of everything just went up soared. And a lot of these contractors that had bid on these buildings, they couldn't afford to build them because the price had gone up for all the building materials. And so they skipped the country. Mr. Fu didn't want to do that. I put on my best haggling mode, and Mr. Fu and I did some discussions together. And we finally came to the agreement that he would sell us that building as it was for $40,000. The problem was that I didn't have $40,000. We had a total of $10,000 in our building fund. So what do you do there? There's a second picture of that building from the other side, the bridge that goes over the big drainage ditch. And that's the two sides. And so we need $30,000 to buy that building so that we can plant a church. Well, y'all forgive me. I know I may get fired for this. But one of my things, I like to be, I don't know what the word is, give unique Christmas presents. So this one year, we had come back to Taiwan, 1972, Christmas that year. I wanted to give my wife a special, unique, unusual Christmas present. And I had seen these China moon guitars displayed in the window of stores and so forth. And I said, why couldn't you take one of those and convert it into a clock? And so I found a factory that made Chinese musical instruments. And I had them to custom make one. It's normally this wood goes all the way through to the bottom, but they cut it off Made a place for a battery, so it's a, well, it's supposed to be running, but it's not. But anyway, we'll work on that later. So that was Barbara's Christmas present. Now, we were living in a two-story house. Living room was downstairs. right next to the stairway and Barbara was having flower arranging lessons. Her teacher was Mrs. Joe. Mrs. Joe would come every week to teach Barbara how to arrange flowers. And she's very picky about her flowers. I won't say more about that, but anyway. But Mrs. Joe, every week she'd come and this clock was hanging above our piano there in the big living room, the entryway into the house. and she admired it greatly. In fact, she admired it so much that she finally encouraged me to apply for a patent on this clock. And one week when she came and Admired it again. She said, if you don't apply for a patent on that, I'm going to apply. Well, so I went and found me a patent lawyer. I applied for a patent. And here is the patent. Now, I can read it for you in Chinese if you want to, but I doubt if that would be beneficial to us. But I got the patent. So now, back to the mission impossible. We had a building, but we needed $30,000 to pay for it. Well, Mr. Fu, we paid him $10,000. We still owed him $30,000. We had one year to come up with the other $30,000. Now, I don't remember what my salary was at that time. When we first went to Taiwan in 1961, Our monthly salary that included everything we needed or did was $375 a month. I'm sure we had gotten a raise or two since then in 1972. But we had that problem. So what are we going to do? Many of you have met and know about our good friend, Brother Jack Bateman, passed away here two or three years ago. We still miss him, but Brother Jack was in the city of Taipei. We were in Taichung and I had shared with him the need and the opportunity and bless his heart, Brother Jack went to a Chinese friend, a wealthy Chinese friend, and asked him to loan us the $30,000 and give us one year to repay the loan. Well, on the salary of a meager I don't know what it was then, but it wasn't much. How are we gonna do that? And then, Barbara's clock to the rescue. I went back to the music instrument factory. Now this factory was at that time in downtown Taichung. It was at the corner of Zhongzheng Road and Zhonghua Road. It was a very small place, but I walked up the stairs And the factory was owned and operated by a widow lady and her daughter. And I negotiated with them about making some clocks so we could sell them or give them. we could repay that loan. Well, I ordered 1,000 of these clocks. Now, this is not a music instrument. This is a clock. At the top, it's the logo says China Moon Guitar Clock. got a music staff, and a moon, and the name in Chinese, Zhong Guo Yue Qin Zhong. And this one is running. And this hangs in our, between our living room and kitchen. And So I ordered 1,000 clocks. Now, you may think that wasn't simple, because you've got to get the numbers on it, you've got to get the clockworks in it, and all that. And we did it. Each one of those clocks, well, we wrote to our churches here in America and told them for everyone who gave us $50, we would give them a clock. Now, can you imagine, at that time, My transportation was a 90cc Honda motorcycle. So when I would get an order from a church, I would load five of these clocks in a box on the back of my motorcycle and take it to the post office and ship it back to America. Now fortunately, the Chinese had a postal regulation or price or method that was called lu kong lian yun. Lu is surface, kong is air. Surface, air, mail. It was a lot cheaper than regular air mail, a lot faster than Surface mail. So, doing that, I paid off the loan. And that church was faithful, still is faithful. and is still a lighthouse. And this slide shows you the building after it was finished. In fact, that truck in front parked there is the Thorntons moving in to the new building. And the church is still going strong. That is the rest of the story. That God has done great things there. We started out with Brother Thomas Xiao as our Chinese coworker, and after three and a half years, we moved on, and Brother Xiao continued as pastor. And then they're on their third pastor now, Chinese pastor. But they're a thriving, congregation, a lighthouse for the Lord there in that community. And okay, on the sign, when we built the church building, one of the first, when we bought the property, it was already two-thirds finished. One of the first things we did was to put a sign up, and you probably can't read that, but it says, I can't read it either. My glasses won't focus that, but it says Xincheng Jiahui. Xincheng, we translated New City Church, New City Baptist Church. So we put a sign up from the very beginning, this is where the gospel of Jesus Christ is preached. And so that is our focus. It is what we must always, always remember, that we will be faithful to the Lord until Jesus comes again. even as that New City Church continues to be a lighthouse for Jesus, this church here has the opportunity to continue to be a faithful witness for the Lord here in this community and in this area. Because I believe that even as it did in so many places, God can still do wonders here at this church. And I would ask that we wait on the Lord and pray to the Lord and ask God to bless and save souls and send families that our church can be one that will honor the Lord until Jesus comes. And this morning as we were driving over to the church from Mansfield, I usually like to turn and listen to Brother Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas. And this morning his sermon was on the signs that are going to precede the second coming of Jesus Christ. We need to be ready. We don't set dates, but we believe that Jesus is coming and that we have a duty, an obligation. And Matthew 24, 14 says, this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world and then shall the end come. We need to be ready and we need to continue to preach and be faithful to the Lord.