But he talked about, you know, maybe you ought to consider packing your bags, selling your house, and going to a missionary field. Ken Drivett did that. We talked about Brother Ken last night. He was a pastor of a large church there in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and all that went along with that. And after many years of that, and God sent him to ultimately the Lakota Indians in South Dakota, and he did that, and a number of others, thank God, have done that. So go to a missionary field. So we don't apologize, we don't have a hidden agenda. We're not trying to sneak in the side door and get you to do something, you know, boy, just spring something on you. No, we have no hidden agenda. We have no hidden agenda. It's obvious, it's clear. It's to make sure people get a missionary heart and give to missionary work and even go to a missionary field. And God can designate that missionary field. They mean going across the street. as well as going across the sea. So, I love meetings like this, and I love the challenges of missions. In Mark 16, we said last night, as in the conclusion of all the Gospels, some form or the other of a great commission is given, whether it was talking in John to Peter and John whether it was in Luke as he approached it a certain way, Matthew, the Great Commission. I grew up in church and I was aware as a child that Matthew 28, 18 through 20 was the Great Commission. And then we come here to Mark and we have a condensed a condensed truth. Well, Mark's gospel is a lot smaller than Matthew's. We would think that maybe under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit he has condensed. this great commission. So our title of the message is Fulfilling the Great Commission where he says in Mark 16 15 he said unto them go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. So let's just break that verse down and as we attempted to do that last night got started on that last night and was not able to make a lot of progress. We have Three main points I'd like to bring to you out of this verse. One, we said that this verse 15 is a command. It is a command that is given. Not a suggestion, not an idea, not just something thrown out there where the church can take it or leave it, you know, that works out. Maybe your church can't, but another church can. No, this is for all of us. This is for every church. I appreciate Brother Ryan's words, and boy, we support and are involved in a lot of parachurch ministries or ministries that come alongside the church. But boy, this command is given to the church and we must be about the business of fulfilling the Great Commission. We said it's proactive. He said go. It is penetrating. He said go in too. It is personal. go ye into all the world. That ye can be, if we want to be broad in our interpretation here, it can be to the Christian, ye, the Christian, individually. It can be to the church collectively. And obviously there's something every individual can do, something every individual can do. Now I can't do everything, And you can't do everything as an individual, but every individual can do something. Every individual can do something. My first desire and goal for me personally at a meeting like this or in our conference, our missions conference revival, is what do you want me to do, Lord? What do you want me to do? It's not what my brother or my sisterhood, Lord, what do you want me to do? He said, ye, go ye into all the world. Let's take that personal. Let's take that real personal. Lord, what do you want me to do? I can't do everything, but I can do something. I may be like a Dylan here. I may can go to the mission field. Not everybody can go to Ecuador, but there may be somebody sitting here tonight like Dylan and God puts it on your heart to go to some, what we call mission field. You know, really the mission field is all around us, but we've got total vision and we're trying to see the globe. We're trying to see the whole world. And when Jesus talked about missions, he talked about to every creature. He talked about to the whole world. He talked about to Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth, of the whole world. And so we have to take this personal, ye, but also we take it collectively. And so as a body of believers here at Borough Baptist, you have to say, what can we do? Not just me, but we. What can we do as a church? And obviously you've been doing some things and you'll be saying, can we do what we've been doing? Can we even do more? Can we do more? Can I give more next year than I gave last year? That's not a bad way to look at it. It's not a bad way to look at it. And I have to look at it that way in our missions conference every year when it comes that time for us to give. I have to look at, can I give more? Can I give more? And I look back at last year, and I was able to give everything that the Lord had impressed on my heart to give. And I've had everything I have needed. He has met all my needs. Maybe I didn't get a raise, but it may be that I can still give more. I think I can. I think I can. And same way with the church. Not only what me can do, but what we can do. And obviously what we can do is a lot bigger and a lot more than just what me can do. And so ye, I like that word ye. It is personal. It is pervasive. He said, go ye into what? All the world. All the world. Now later we said he gave the strategy and acts where he said, you'll receive power, the Holy Ghost will come upon you, there's your power, and then you'll be witnesses. You shall be, you will be witnesses unto me. You'll not just do witnessing, but you will be witnesses. See? Before Ken Trivett, could do a lot of witnessing to the Lakota Indians, he had to be a witness. And before those Indians, and especially the men, Native American men, before they would ever trust what he had to say in his witnessing, they watched him as a witness. Why, even the Apostle Paul, who is our pattern, the book of Acts, the mission manual, Why, even Apostle Paul on a couple of occasions, maybe even more, you remember talked about how I lived among you? In other words, I behaved myself. I loved you. Night and day, I took care of you. Yeah, I preached the word to you and I didn't shun to preach all the word, but I was honest among you. I was a good man among you. He wasn't boasting and bragging and all that. He's stating some facts and saying this is what I had to be in order to be a witness so I could do some witnessing. And right here in your community, you have developed a witness. People know your life. And if your life glorifies the Lord, then that makes you a real good candidate for witnessing to people. And so I like that idea. Not just at Jerusalem. But he said both in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and outermost part of the world, all at the same time. All at the same time. Somebody, well I think we'll take care of home first. You'll never get that done. Take care of home first? How in the world are you going to get this county completely converted? How are you going to get this state completely converted before you start branching out and reaching out? No, no. We're to be all of it all at the same time. Touching your community, touching your county, touching your state, touching your country. and touching the world all at the same time. Amen. And so it is pervasive, is it not? That's what he's saying here. It is a command that's given. Let me move on and say it is a cry that is gospel. It is a cry that is gospel or good news. It is a cry that is good news. What is the Great Commission? It is a cry That is good news. He said unto them, go ye into all the world and do what? Preach the gospel to every creature. Preach, that's the word I use, the word cry. And we're to preach the gospel, the good news. And so, it's like when the angels came in Luke 2.10, and you know what they said? They said to the shepherds, I bring you good tidings of great joy. And so they brought the good tidings and the shepherds went and found the baby Jesus. But isn't it interesting that God does not use angels to preach the gospel? Obviously they could have done it. They did it in that format. They did it in that setting. And they were successful in that those shepherds that heard them went and found the infant, found the baby Jesus. But God in his ultimate purpose and goal and economy and evangelizing the world has not chosen the angels to do it, but the likes of you and me. Because those angels, as good as they were in oratory, and as good as they were in their praise, and as good as they were, those angels really did not know what grace really means. They don't know what it is to be a redeemed sinner. They don't know what it is to be converted by the grace of God. And so God says, I want an army. I want a people to go for me and give the gospel who have already experienced the gospel. But you know what the good news is? I don't know if an angel could get excited about the gospel, but I'll tell you I can get excited about the gospel. And you can get excited about the gospel because I've received it. As Paul said over in Corinthians, he said, I gave it to you as I received it. I preached it to you as I received it." He told him, I came to Corinth with fear and trembling. And he said, but I preached unto you Christ and him crucified. I've given you the gospel. And so that's what the Lord wants. He wants people who've been redeemed, who've been born again. Obviously, he's not looking for people who are perfect yet. One day we will be. But he can take us while he's still knocking off the rough edges, while he's still making us into what he wants us to be, and he can send us to the mission fields of the world. and have us to tell people what God has done for us, they can see that. Maybe that's the reason Barnabas was so happy when he got down to Antioch and he saw the grace of God. And he could say, you know, when he went back and gave his report, he could say the same thing that God did for me, he's done for those people at Antioch. I'll tell you what, I have found that the gospel bridges people all over the world together. A guy like Samuel must say, we can't even speak the same language, but we can look at each other and smile because we know the same Jesus. There's a connection. There's a connection with our spirit that's stronger than the barriers. that would separate us, like our language, communication and those things. I'm just saying, I'm glad that God has allowed us sinners, saved by the grace of God, to get in on the business. God's business, the greatest business in all the world, of telling people about the Lord Jesus Christ. You see in this verse, quickly, the mission. What is the mission in this phrase? Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creed. What do we see? We see the mission. What is the mission? It's to preach. The Greek word, they say, is karisso, which simply means to herald or to proclaim. And they would have what we would call, maybe in literature, days gone by, in cities, the town crier. The town crier. And this was before they had Facebook. going back a few hundred years. Before they had Facebook. Before they had fax machines. Before they had billboards. Before they had telephones. And if they wanted to get the word out, they just had to tell a woman. But anyway, no, oh Lord, I can't believe I said that. It's been years since I've said that. Please forgive me. I know that's not politically correct. I know that's offensive. but I'll probably do it again one of these days. Forgive me, ladies. Anyway, all the means we have now, but they didn't have all that. And so the governor or the mayor would send a town crier out into the town, into the village to tell people when there was an important announcement to be made. Hear ye, hear ye! And that's where this idea comes from. Now the significance of that, and when it's brought over into the, and sanctified into the world of Christianity, and we associate it with the gospel, that idea to herald and to proclaim was always, listen to this, always associated with a suggestion of formality, gravity, and authority, which must be listened to and obeyed. I think about that. That just, that grasped me when I found maybe a year or two when I put this message together and I was researching and I was looking at that and I've looked at that word before. But that town crier sent there by the governor maybe, the king, and he's saying, hear ye, hear ye, and people would stop what they were doing everywhere and listen. Because it was understood that what this man had to say had a degree of formality and gravity and authority which demanded that the people listen and obey. Wow. Now whether the sinners grasp that or not, whether the sinners that we're crying out to grasp that or not, we better grasp it. Our missionaries need to grasp it, Dylan. We need to know that when we are crying out the word of God, and whether these sinners that we're preaching to, whether they get it or not, we better get it, that there's a note of formality and gravity and authority with what we have to say. And our prayer is that the people will listen and will obey and fall before God in repentance and cry out for His mercy and His grace and be saved, born again into the family of God. The mission to preach. A man by the name, I think I heard Adrian Rogers tell this story. A man by the name of Stephen Grellet, a pioneer evangelist to lumbermen in the Rocky Mountains many, many years ago. Doing this pioneer missionary work, felt the spirit of God leading him to a camp there in the Rockies where they had been cutting timber. He was to go there and as he would do when he would go into these camps of lumbermen, he would find him a place at an appropriate time and he would preach the gospel to those lumbermen. And he got there and the camp had been deserted. Nobody was there. That camp had been broken and they'd been dispersed, moved on to another place. But this man was so in tune with the Lord and so sensitive to the Lord that he did something that the average person would think, man, you're crazy, you're crazy. And if you're going to do God's work sometime, in order to qualify, you've got to be kind of crazy. At least by the world standard. I mean, Paul did say, I'm a fool for Christ. Who's fool are you? Everybody, somebody's fool. And this man did something that people would have thought, really, if this man's crazy. But you know, here's what Mr. Grellett said. The Lord sent me here to preach to this camp. And I'm going to preach. And the story is that he preached and then went on his way. Somehow in the providence of God, years later, Mr. Grevitt speaking somewhere, I'm not sure where it was and the details with it, but he told of that experience. He told of that. And there was a gentleman that came to him and said, sir, I was there that day. I was there that day. He said, I was a foreman over a group. And he said, we had left an ax. And he said, I came back to get an ax. And as I made my way there, I heard your voice. And he said, I stood there and I listened, rather than interrupt. And I stood there and listened. He said, later, I was saved by the grace of God. and now I am saved and I'm also preaching the word of God. Isn't that amazing? Don't you love that kind of stuff where God just tells his people to do something and we just do it? And if you wait to get the approval of the world and sometimes even the approval of the church, sometimes they'll just shake their head. They told William Carey it couldn't be done. They told William Carey it couldn't be done. But God had done told him otherwise. And there's never been a man went to the mission field that had any more against him to keep him from going than William Carey. But he went over and even after he got there and all the setbacks. But he just did what God, I'm trying to say that the mission, it is a cry that is gospel. It is a cry that is good news. It is a cry that the devil does not want to go out to this lost world. We have a message that the devil would like to contain it within the walls of our churches. Now, ultimately, he tried to stop it, and he is trying to stop it, and things like this illustration Ryan gave at the beginning, this foolishness of a barking in the spirit, and this kind of foolishness. I mean, it tells you to the extremes the devil will go, to corrupt the gospel, corrupt our worship, confuse the church, and we've had everything, laughing phenomenons, laughing phenomenons. I met a man who was a seminary graduate preaching in the Westminster Chapel in London, England. I met him personally. I talked to him personally. Who was selected by Martin Lloyd-Jones to be the pastor that would follow him in that great church. And this great intellectual theologian and his family got caught up in the laughing phenomenon. of the 90s. That's not hearsay, I know that personally. I sat in the service and talked with him and heard him speak. He's written books, he was a great author. But even they, I'm just telling you, the devil is working overtime to try to confuse and corrupt and if somehow he could get us to keep the gospel inside the walls of our churches. But we have a cry that is gospel, a cry that is good news. That's the mission. That's the message. It's good news. Now, the problem is a lot of people don't know the bad news. And the good news will never be the good news until people, first of all, appreciate the bad news. And that's why sometimes we still have to preach on hell. Yeah, that's not too popular in this politically correct, crazy society in which we live, but it's still in the Bible. If you're gonna preach the Bible, somewhere you're gonna have to preach on that awful place of torment that, by the way, Jesus spoke of. More than he talked about heaven, he talked about hell. There's a lot of bad news that sinners need to know and appreciate. We're not just trying to make better people out of good people. But now that's the philosophy of America, isn't it? Well, everybody's got some good in them. Really? It's not what the Bible said. None good, no not one. And so I'd rather be scripturally correct than politically correct. How about you? May not make you popular. but you can please God anyway. I'm just saying. So we give them this good news, specifically the death, the burial, and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the gospel, and Paul said, I'm not ashamed of it, as it's the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, Jew first and also to the Greek. The gospel, there is a power in that. First Corinthians 15 makes it clear that the gospel is how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. He was buried and rose again from the dead according to the scriptures. That's a powerful message. That is a powerful message. Paul told them in Rome. He wrote them a letter. He said, I want to come to Rome. He said, I've been wanting to come to Rome for a long time. I'm paraphrasing a little bit. He said, I'm ready to preach the gospel to you that at Rome And he said, I'm not ashamed of that gospel. And so that's our message to the lost. So there's the mission, the message, and then there's the masses, the multitudes, the mankind, he said, every creature, every creature. It is about people. It's about churches, sure. It's about building hospitals, of course. It's about youth camps, rescue shelters. jail preaching, Bible printing, distribution, orphanages. Missions is a great big umbrella like this ceiling, like this roof. And underneath there are a lot of means and methods and ways by which we are able to fulfill the Great Commission. You find where God wants you, what God wants you to do, and you get at that. And God will honor that and bless that. Now let me finally close with this final thought. It is a command that is given, it is a cry that is gospel or good news, and it is a concept of God. This verse 15, this whole idea of the Great Commission is a concept of God. How do you know? Verse number 15, that first phrase, and He said unto them. Brother Wade, it wasn't like they said unto him. He said unto them. I like that. That's where all of it starts, friend, with us and the ministry and the work of God. It is what does God say? What are his orders? What is his plan, Brother Ken? What is his strategy? And he's given us a book and he's told us. And so it is a concept of God. About everything, anything, worth anything was a concept of God. I mean, you think about it. Somewhere in eternity past, if that's even a viable term or thought, somewhere in eternity past, the church was a concept of God. For Christ to die on the cross for your sins and mine was the concept of God. The home, a man and a woman, his wife and children. Last time I looked in the Bible, that's still the divine way. Now we're in a missions conference, I can't preach on all that tonight. But don't look at me strange, I will. I'll just stop and preach on something. I won't do you that away. The home was a concept of God. Even human government. The nation of Israel. And look in the scriptures and look at society. And anything and everything that's viable and pretty much worth anything is the concept of God. And so reaching center. I love that song, don't you? When he was on the cross, I was on his mind. We were on his mind. The church was on his mind. Hallelujah. It is a concept of God. So let me say this tonight, bring the message. He, Jesus, is our commander, our chief in strategy. He is our commander. So we take this word as the word of our commander, our commander-in-chief. And it is his strategy that we are to follow. The largest amphibious invasion in history of the world was the invasion of Europe, Operation Overlord, June the 6th, 1944. The plans began to be made in 1943. Details, ultimate details were worked out. Eisenhower at Normandy devised with his, of course, helpers, a plan that would create the invasion of Europe on that D-Day. Without a plan, it would have never taken place. It would have never worked. A lot of planning it took. Over 4,000 ships, over 10,000 aircraft, over 160,000 troops were involved in the D-Day invasion, the largest amphibious invasion in history of the world. And that's a part of our history. And we honor and we celebrate our veterans and very few of those that fought and even fought there are alive today. What a great plan. What a great concept. and they had to practice, and they worked, and they labored, and they're on the coast of England, and the troops were gathered, and the supplies were gathered, and there was decoys set up in the Dover area and other places where they make it look like they would go to Calais, France, instead of to Normandy. So much went into all of it, so much planning, so many details. The concept of the military minds of that day. However, Eisenhower gave a speech to the men the night before they were to embark on this. And he also scribbled on a note accepting all the blame if the mission failed. What a leader, what a commander, what a general. Could I say to you that our commander-in-chief has to not scribble some kind of note of failure? Oh no. I told you last, I read in Revelation chapter 5 where every tongue, every nation is going to get the gospel. People are going to be saved. Not everybody is going to be saved. But our Lord has defined a tremendous plan. It is His concept. And He just needs some willing hearts and laborers who will say, I'll go. I'll go. I'll go. I'll give, I'll give. I may not can go, but I'll give, I'll give, I'll give. I'll pray, I'll pray. Give me a list. Preacher, church secretary, give me a list of all of our missionaries. Give me their names and where they're serving. And I promise I'll pray. I'll pray, I'll pray. Yes, it's a concept of God. Nobody can improve on that. He is our chief, our commander, if you will, in strategy. He is our captain in service. Now when we think about the general or the chief, we don't think about somebody who's going on the battlefield. Eisenhower stayed behind. He didn't cross the waters, that channel and go into Normandy, he stayed behind. But Jesus is not only our commander in chief of the strategy, Jesus is the captain of our salvation. You know what he does? He gets on the battlefield with us. He's there with us. He's storming the shores. of all of our continents with us. He's storming the shores. He's going with us into the valleys and in the mountains. He's going with us into the cities and the villages. He's going with us into the slums and the worst of the worst. He goes with us in all these places, cause he's our captain. He's our captain. The chief leader, that word captain in Hebrews 2.10. is the chief leader, one that takes a lead in anything and thus affords an example. He is our predecessor, our pioneer, our example. Not a missionary in this world or preacher or pastor in the residence will ever go anywhere but what will not see his footprints where he has gone before. He won't be standing in the distant shadows saying, y'all go on now. Y'all go on. Go on. See you when you get back, y'all go. Oh no. No, he goes with us. He said, Lo, I'm with you. Always, somehow meaning all the way. All the way. All the way. He's our captain. He's our captain. He's our chief, he's our captain, and you know, I just wanna praise him and brag on him. I wanna say he's our champion. He's our champion. Jesus is our champion. In sacrifice. Strategy, he's our commander. Service, he's our captain. He's right there with us. But he's our champion in sacrifice. And the greater our sacrifices seems to be, the greater our result. Now the sacrifice, if it's monetary, somebody's monetary gift may be larger than somebody else's monetary gift. But it's interesting to me, two, at least two in the New Testament, that the Lord Jesus would have and did approve of has to do with a woman who gave that little penny, if you will. And she ultimately, in the Lord's economy, gave more than all the rest. Because sometimes His measurement is not how much we have put in the plate, but how much we have left after we put it in the plate. Now we're looking at how much do you put in the plate, but there's one up here that's looking at, yeah, but now how much do you have left? And then what about that little lad? When they had 5,000 plus, maybe 10,000, 15,000 to feed. And so it's time to feed. And so well, it's late in the day. Back then, McDonald's closed early. What are we going to do? And so then somebody comes up with this little lad. Now think about this. Out of the group of 5,000, 10,000, 15,000 men, women, and children, the most least likely person to be used to feed the multitude I mean, surely he could have chosen a man who just took the day off. He's got a good job and he works. Maybe he's a fisherman, but he's took the day off to hear this preacher. Maybe they could go up to him and say, do you have anything? You got some money? Maybe we could take an offer. No. In fact, they said if we had two thirds of a year's earnings, of a laborer's earnings, we wouldn't have enough to feed this crowd. Basically that's what it translates into, two-thirds of a year's earnings. But here comes this little lad. I don't know if he'd come walking up out of the crowd. I'd like to think maybe he did. Maybe he heard the conversation. Maybe he'd gotten up close to the Lord. If I could just say it this way, if you get close to the Lord, you can hear things. I don't know. I can't speculate. I have an imagination. I have a sanctified imagination. Man, I can see stuff sometimes. One preacher friend of mine told me, he said, brother Ronnie, you got more imagination than you do inspiration. So I try to balance them out. Nobody's ever told me, I don't know. So I'm as right as anybody else. Did the little lad come strolling up? How did Philip, or Andrew, or any of the disciples, how in the world did they find him? Did he come strolling up and say, sir, I have two fishes and five loaves of bread, but it's barley bread. That's what the poor people ate. That's what the poverty people ate. The common poor people ate the barley bread. but you can have it all. So the disciple says, Lord, we've got this little lad here and he's got two fish and five loaves of bread and even the disciples gonna put a damper on it. Do you know what he said? What are they? Among so many I Just look around Look around What are we Among so many What are we If we have a hundred people if we have 200 Here we had a thousand people. What are we? Now if you adopt that philosophy, you're dead in the water. You are dead in the water. And you might as well take Philippians 4.13 out of your Bible, either mark over it, cut it out, just go ahead and forget Philippians 4.13 where Paul said, I can. He didn't say I can't. He said I can. If I'd have known I was going this way tonight, other night I was preaching similarly on this, and I brought a can with me to the pool pit. A can of butter beans or something. And I tore the paper off and I said, I'm gonna say, God, and you say, But buddy, I had them. And I did that at the beginning of the sermon, and I did that all through the sermon. When I thought somebody was lulling, I'd pull that can out. God, I can't. Did you ever go to the store to buy a cane of corn? You gonna starve to death. Honey says, go get me, I need a can of corn, I need a can of beans, I need a can of tater, I need a can of soup. And you ain't, that ain't gonna cost you nothing. It ain't gonna cost you nothing. And that's the way a lot of Baptists are. Get me something that ain't gonna cost me nothing. A can of what? No, she's never, my wife's never told me to go buy a can of anything. And the day she tells me to go buy a can of Vayner sausages, I'm gonna tell her it don't exist. I want a can of Vayners. Do y'all say Vieners in Arkansas? Do I need to translate that? Now up north they say Vienna. I ain't eating no Vienna sausage. No sir, I eat Vieners. Now on the can it ain't even spelt right. There's not a R in there, but they are Vieners. It's like at home, we open the window and we close the window. Now, you like that, don't you? He's a Mississippi hick. He's just an old Mississippi, that's all right. That little lad, that little lad was the least likely. You may be sitting here and you think, well, they ain't gonna expect nothing out of me. Ain't nothing I can do. I mean, I'm the least likely person. And all through the Bible, that's who God used. Moses said, get my brother Aaron. God said, no, I'm gonna use you. Gideon said, I'm not a man of valor. I'm the least of my brethren, my father's house, don't get me. God said, no, I'm gonna use you. And when he got ready to select his really his first king, now he doesn't got Saul, but he was, God was waiting on David. He wanted David. And after he looked at his older seven brothers, and Samuel said, is it one of these? And Jesse said, well, I do have one more, but he's out taking care of the sheep. And God whispered in Samuel's ear and said, it's him. It's him. A little ruddy lad out there, the least likely. So whoever's the most least likely, you ought to just go ahead and surrender tonight. I know Mike Coop. I guarantee you he's the least likely to do anything. Don't even pronounce his name right or spells it wrong one or the other. He's got to be a coupé. He's got to be a coupé. And in the Greek it actually translates kook. I shouldn't have said that. Oh me people, I'm feeling this too much tonight. Oh thank you Lord. Let me close. Could we stand? Could our musicians come? Jesus is my champion, is he yours? The greater our sacrifice, that little lad gave his all. And before the Lord took it, read it, before he took it, he told them, sit these people down, get them situated. Then he took it and he blessed it. And that little lad went home that day with a story to tell. And he had to tell it, because he left home that morning with one basket. and he comes home at the end of the day with 12. Read it, it's in your Bible. You say, you think he got it, I think he did. He's the one that gave. You say, well, they were 12 disciples. Yeah, they just distributed, he's the one that gave. Can you see him? Maybe he's tied them together with a string and rope. He's got those 12 baskets. And he comes home and his mama sees him and says, son, you left today with one basket. What's going on? And in my sanctified imagination, I hear him say, mama, you need to sit down. I got something to tell you. In closing, talking about Eisenhower a while ago. After the war, Eisenhower was asked in a convocation of students, 1947, said, what was the hardest decision you had to make? And he said on that occasion, it had to do with the airborne paratroopers. and the gliders and the troops who would have to land behind the enemy lines. We were told beforehand. The estimates were 75% to 90% of them would die. But we gave the command. And I don't know if they asked him what was your greatest joy or accomplishment, but he said, the airborne did their job. I just somehow can't help but believe there's a way, there's a sense in which God's heart is heavy for all of us. The son of God was a man of sorrows. And God sends people like those missionaries, Jim Elliott and those guys into the mission fields, to the Aucas in Ecuador and other places, all kinds of situations. Or whether it's a Tommy Tillman, who goes to the lepers of Thailand, and they told him, you don't love us, missionaries don't love us, Why? They don't associate with us. They don't come around us. So Tommy Tillman said, I will. And he'd go into their homes. And he'd eat with them. He said, I've slept under the bridges with them. I've held them in my arms. And he's built centers for them in hospitals. And God eventually gave Tommy Tillman favor with the coming as government. Said, you've got access to all of it. What a sacrifice. And he never contacted leprosy one time. In all these 20, 30, 40 years, not one time. Wow. But one of these days, may it be said of us, you did your job. You did your job. Translated into the King James, well done, thou good and faithful servant. Amen. Could it be if our sister would play? I don't know. How do you do? I didn't even talk to you, Pastor. Would somebody like to just come forward tonight Say, Lord, I want to do my job. I want to get a missionary heart. I want to give to the missionary work. And Lord, if it's your will, I'll go to a missionary field. Could we do that? Could we just make our way to the altars? Moms, dads, sons, daughters? Just slip down to the altar. Just you and the Lord. Talk about it. Kind of sanctify in your heart and mind tonight what you want to do Sunday morning. About your giving. Ask God to sanctify that in your heart. Get some things settled tonight. And tomorrow you'll have all day to meditate on it. Talk to the Lord about it. Think about it. to make that commitment.