Thank you. Praise the Lord. It's been a blessing already tonight to just to sing that one song that you sing before the throne of God. That happens to be our official church anthem at First Bible Church. And we sing that, we sing it all the time. And there's nothing that gets our folks shouting and excited like that song. Just to think about the standing that we have before the Lord Jesus Christ. It's such a blessing. Well, it's a blessing to be here tonight. I'm very thankful. Brother Mike had mentioned to me, he said sometimes, I haven't really been here that often, but he said, our folks get nervous if they know you're coming because they're afraid that you're going to try and take me back to New York with you. I got to tell you, if it were within my power to do that, I would do that. because many years ago when Mike and I first met, the Lord kind of knit our hearts together, fell in love with him and Grace and the children, and tried like crazy to get him to come to New York and to work with us there in the church in Staten Island. And the Lord had other ideas. And I was a little upset with the Lord for a few weeks after I found out that he wasn't coming to New York. But it's obvious that he's right where God wants him to be. And I got to tell you, you have a tremendous blessing. Your church, we've seen it from the beginning, and seen what God is doing now, and hear the reports from Brother Mike, and it just really is thrilling. It's just thrilling to see what God is doing here. And people that are getting saved, and the vision that you have for the ministry, And it's truly, just truly a work of the Lord. And we just rejoice together with you guys in that. Very happy to have my wife Margaret with me here tonight. That's a huge blessing. I'm so thankful to the Lord for her. I'm glad that we could come together. And this is a missions conference or missions emphasis, I don't know what we're calling this, but Mike asked me if I would come and speak on that subject. I don't know if you were aware of that, but that's what we're going to be emphasizing. But I'm gonna tell you right up front that I'm probably the least qualified to speak on this subject because I'm not a missionary. I'm just a pastor, and I'm happy being just a pastor, very happy with that, happy just to be a part of my church family. And we have more than we can handle where we are, got plenty to do, plenty to keep us busy. But God has blessed us over the years to allow us to be involved in a few things. and to be able to put some missionaries on the mission field. And I think the Lord has allowed me, not because of any great wisdom on my part, but just over the years having the privilege of meeting some men that I learned an awful lot from. and I took what I learned from them. We tried to incorporate it in our church, and so if we're able to pass a little bit of that on to your church, that would be a huge blessing. But I'm not a missions expert, haven't written any books on the subject or anything like that, but it's a subject very dear to my heart. I told my wife today as I was just preparing, trying to get me ready for this tonight and for this week, I realize now why the Lord brought me here for these meetings. I know why. It wasn't for you folks. It was for me. Absolutely, the Lord showed me that today. Absolutely for me. And the thing that I'm gonna preach about tonight, I have no idea what I'm gonna preach about tomorrow night, but the Lord gave me a message for tonight. And it really is a message for Mike Veach. So I don't know if any of you will get anything out of it. But I'm looking forward to it because I need it tonight. So I know it's going to help me, and I realized it. I told my wife today. Now I know why I'm here. I think I needed a little fire rekindled in my heart on this subject, and I see just as looking over it again and looking back over. I've been reading some biographies over the last couple of weeks and just looking at mission statistics until my brain hurts. And none of that really, like, you know, gripped my heart. And then the Lord did something just really simple today, like He does. And it's always just through His Word. It's just through His Word. And I don't know if we'll get to any of the mission statistics and stuff like that. I mean, there's so many things, I guess, I would like to say. It's just impossible to cram them into just a few days here. But we'll just see what the Lord has for us. I don't have any schedule, any agenda. I'm just going to try to go as the Lord leads each day. I sincerely hope that you get a blessing out of it. I'm looking to get a blessing out of it tonight myself. Turn with me in your Bible, if you will, to the book of Acts, chapter 1. I guess there are so many ways to approach the subject of missions. And I know you're not a stranger to that. As far as the subject of missions, you support some missionaries. Your pastor and some of your men have been with us on a trip to Haiti. And I understand Brother Mike and Grace and I don't know, maybe some others are going to be going to England on a mission trip this summer. We also are going in a month and a half to Poland, trying to get the brother to go with us to Poland, but we'll be in Poland for a couple of weeks on a street preaching mission trip there for almost two weeks in several different cities with the Riggs's. Brother Brent Riggs has been here and preached for you and we'll be there with him in Poland. So there's a lot of different ways I guess we could begin this, but I want to talk to you tonight about the eye problem that most Christians have today. We have an eye problem. We have a vision problem. We don't see things the way God sees things. That's our big problem. That's one big problem. And part of the Christian life is learning how to think the way God thinks, learning how to love the things that God loves, because they're foreign to you as a lost man. I mean, you get saved and you get a Bible and you start finding out this is a whole new way of life. This is a whole new way of thinking. This is a whole new way of seeing the world. This is a whole new way of seeing your marriage, seeing yourself, seeing your children. Life is just turned upside down by the Word of God once you get saved. And when it comes to the subject of missions, most of us can't see past the end of our nose. We don't see the big picture. After all, we don't see the Earth, the world, and the nations that are part of this world from God's perspective. I mean, you know, you've seen pictures of, you know, guys that have gone up in outer space and taken pictures from wherever, from the, whatever that thing is up there, the space, what is that thing, the space shuttle or, you know, the moon, pictures of the Earth from there. And astronauts have commented, like, you know, how small it seems. And it's a whole different perspective. But imagine if you could see this world, not the earth, but the world. The earth is just the dirt, the rocks, the mountains, but the world, that's the people, the nations. If you could see the world from God's vantage point. If you and I could see what God sees, you say, that's impossible. No, it isn't. He shows you what he sees. He has shown you the way He sees you. He's shown you and I the way He sees the world. And most of the problem is I don't see things the way God sees things. And because I don't see things the way God sees things, I don't do things the way God wants me to do them as a Christian. So when it comes to the subject of missions, there's a lot of ways to begin this, but I think it probably begins with the vision, begins with the eyes. There are other things. The subject of missions has got to get to your feet. It's got to get to your mouth. It's certainly got to get to your ear. But I think it starts with the eye. So that's where I want to start tonight. I want to talk about fixing our eye problem. And here in Acts chapter 1, of course, these were the last words of our commander just before he ascended back to heaven. He left us a job to do. He left us instructions. And he said something here that gives us a hint. as to how God sees the task of missions. Acts chapter 1, I'm going to assume that you already understand the circumstances here. The Lord is meeting with His disciples. He's getting ready to ascend up into heaven. These are His last parting words to them on the earth. It says in verse 4, "...and being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, Which, saith he, ye have heard of me? The promise there is of the Holy Spirit, His power, His presence in your life, His provision and all those things. For John truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. When they therefore were come together, they asked of Him, saying, Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? And He said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in His own power. Verse 8 is where we'll begin tonight. But ye shall receive power After that, the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you so much, Lord, for the privilege of being here. And Lord, I know that tonight I am going to attempt the impossible, Lord, and that is to try to speak from Your heart, Your mind, Your words, and it's impossible for any man to do that without the direction and help and power of the Holy Spirit of God. So help me tonight, Lord, that I might speak as the oracles of God, that, Lord, it would be Your Spirit, it would be all of You, Lord, it would minister to our hearts. Lord, and I confess tonight that I'm the neediest one here this evening, and I need my own heart, Lord, preached to this evening, and I pray that You would remind me and help me to understand how you view this world. And Lord, I want that same viewpoint. I want that same vantage point. I need that vision in my life, and I know every church does. If we're going to do what is dear to your heart, Lord, then we have to see things the way that you see them. And Lord, we're so prone to just look at things very nearsightedly and shortsightedly, and I pray that you would help us tonight, Lord, enlarge the vision of this church, open our eyes, Lord, and help us, Lord, to anoint our eyes with that eye salve that you've provided. And, Lord, may you alone get the glory and the honor we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, there's so much that I guess could be said from this verse, and I'm would be the first one to try and say everything that there is to say about this verse. I mean, that would be me. This past Sunday I was very embarrassed because I wasn't watching my watch, Sunday morning, and I preached for an hour and fifty minutes, almost two hours. And I looked at my watch like in the last five minutes of the message and I almost had a heart attack when I saw my watch. I was almost afraid to look up at anybody. So I wrapped it up and got out of there as fast as I could and went home and hid for the rest of the day. But anyways, I'm going to try not to do that tonight. We'll try to shorten it up and squeeze some things in here for you. Verse number 8. So many things in here in this verse like just scream to be mentioned, but you shall receive power. Obviously, if we're going to talk about missions, You can't do it in your own strength. You don't have the wisdom to do it. You don't have the fleshly energy to do it. Real missions has to be done by the power that God has provided, and He's provided all the power necessary. God is never going to put a job in front of a church to do and then leave you short-changed when it comes to the ability to do that. God will provide for us. He doesn't ask us to do something and then not give us the provision, the grace, the ability, the wisdom, the power to be able to get that done if he's asked us to do it. And when it comes to missions, he's giving his disciples here some very important instructions, his last instructions to them before he goes home, and he promised to provide the power. He said, you shall receive power. And that power, of course, comes from God. It's the power of the Holy Spirit. It's available to any one of us that want it. You don't have to pay for it. You don't have to get on your face and beg God and cry for four hours to have it. You just have to desire that. The Holy Spirit is more than willing to enable us and empower us if we could only see things the way that He sees things. So God promised the power. He said, after that, the Holy Ghost has come upon you. And ye shall be witnesses unto me. And then he mentions four geographical coordinates here, if you will. I don't know what you want to call these, but he mentions these four places in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and under the uttermost part of the earth. Now, it's not in Jerusalem, or in Judea, or in Samaria, or in the uttermost part of the earth. You can see that it's all four at the same time. all four at the same time. Now, these places are not, there's a distinction here in each of these places. Jerusalem is pretty easy to understand where that is. We have a little thing we're doing in our church right now called Operation Jerusalem. We're just trying to get the gospel to every house on Staten Island. That is 185,000 houses. And we've been at it for two years. We're about two-thirds of the way done. From our print shop, we're printing the gospel, hanging it on the doors. We did this ten years ago, twelve years ago, and we're now trying to do it for the second time. Over $100,000 it cost us 10 years ago to do it, and it's a little bit more than that this time. But just to get the gospel, to bring the word of God to everybody's door, and the Lord has blessed our church in return as a result of that. Those expenses sounds like a lot of money. We don't have a lot of money. We don't have any rich people in our church, just a relatively small congregation. But the Lord has brought all that money that we've ever spent on Operation Jerusalem back to us many times over. when you're faithful, when you put missions and you put an effort to reach your Jerusalem, if you're willing to spend for that and be spent for that, then God will certainly bring it back to you. He will not ever be in your debt, that's for sure. It says, but in Jerusalem. So Jerusalem is easy to understand, but if you think about these four areas, each one of them is sort of, you can understand it because in each of these areas, the work, the ministry, the gospel, the work of being a witness, of being a testimony, of bringing the gospel to these areas around us, gets progressively more difficult. From Jerusalem, it gets a little more difficult to go to Judea and then Samaria and then to the uttermost. And the obstacles are compounded each time you step one degree further out. For example, in Jerusalem, that would be the area, that would be your city here, that would be the area immediately around you. What's the obstacle that has to be overcome in Jerusalem? Well, simply the spiritual blindness of the lost people around you. That's something that you have to pray about. You have to pray that God would open eyes and so on and so forth. But that's the biggest obstacle in our Jerusalem. It's just the natural blindness of the people that live there, the spiritual blindness. But then when you move out from Jerusalem, for us to go from Jerusalem to Judea would be to go to all the surrounding metropolitan area. For example, Brooklyn, Queens, those kind of places. Now, it's still my city, but now going from Jerusalem to Judea, Jerusalem was obviously a city, Judea the area around that city, when you go from Jerusalem to Judea, Well, there's a secondary obstacle that occurs. Not only do you still have the spiritual blindness of the people, but once you go to Judea, you have the obstacle of extra distance, just an extra effort. Now it takes a little longer. It's going to take a little more gas to reach those groups of people that are a little further out from South Lion. but you have a responsibility. You have a responsibility for South Lyon, and you have a responsibility for the surrounding. Look on a map and see how big Judea was. That was a big chunk of real estate. You have a responsibility for the area surrounding South Lyon. It's a little harder to get there. Same obstacle, the people are spiritually blind, but now it's going to be a little more difficult to set your sight on that and to see that as a need for you to reach. It's going to be more expensive to go there, more time-consuming. But then God didn't stop there. He said, Jerusalem and all, and did it say all? Right. And in all Judea, the surrounding area. And then the next one is Samaria. Now in Samaria, there's an extra obstacle that's added because if you know the story in the Bible in John chapter 4, Samaria was quite different culturally from the Jews in Jerusalem and in Judea. It wasn't really that far away distance-wise. You could get to Samaria relatively quickly, but it was an area that most of the Jews avoided because culturally they were prejudiced against the Samaritans. So to reach your Samaria, it's those people that you probably don't even really care if they get saved or not. It's the people that, you know, you think you might argue with your pastor whether it's worth to spend money and time and effort to go and reach them. The Jews had a prejudice against the Samaritans. In John chapter 4, you know that the Lord, in a way, rebuked them for that, His own disciples, because they weren't that burdened for the Samaritans. So when you go to Samaria, you have the three obstacles now. Spiritual blindness, because they're just as blind. You've still got the problem of distance. It's much more difficult to go there. But you have the culture. It's not something that you're comfortable with. It's not your comfort zone. It might be they just live differently. They eat different food. They look different. They came from a different part of the world. And I don't know about you. Well, I do know about you because you're very near to a big city and we're in a big city. And I know that all around us are pockets of people almost like little islands of nations. Like my wife and I one time, I asked her one night, just to take her out on a date, I said, would you like to go to India tonight for dinner? Because there's a town right over the bridge from us in New Jersey, Edison, New Jersey, that's like a little India. There's five or six blocks of this town where you wouldn't even know you were in America. I mean all the stores, the restaurants, clothing stores, everything is in whatever language that is, Sanskrit or I don't know what language that is. I mean, and everybody around you is Indian. So it's the hub of a big Indian community, but it's kind of like their downtown area. And so we've gone there with our Bible Institute class. We bought tracts, printed tracts actually, in their language, whatever that was. and just went there one night and just reached India from 20 miles from my church. Now, that was my Samaria. That was a Samaria. Nearby, a pocket of people that are unlike me. I don't like their food. I wouldn't buy their dresses for my wife. I mean, it is, you know, but I mean, but they love it and that's fine, but I mean, but I'm sure around you, you've got pockets of people that maybe inside you, you may have some you know, some hesitancy to reach them, some fear, some prejudice that you might have against those people. And we think it's admirable for a missionary to go to the other side of the world and reach those people, but many times, living near us are those same kinds of little areas, like Samaria, that if you could see it the way the Lord sees it, and could get a burden for it, and reach it, you would see the blessings of God come back in. for your church. And then, of course, that fourth area is the uttermost, and it's obvious what extra obstacle there is in the uttermost. Not only do you still have their spiritual blindness, not only do you still have the trouble in distance, and now even much more distant, Most times it's a foreign culture, and then you have the extra barrier of a foreign language. So now it's even more difficult to reach them, because it's not only a culture you're not familiar with, now you've got to learn their speech, you've got to learn their language. But yet, what I see here is what I wanted you to see, and what I saw again today in looking at this, was this is what God sees. See, God doesn't just see me and my little Jerusalem. And He didn't want me just to care about my little Jerusalem. He wanted me to care about my Jerusalem and my Judea and those pockets of Samaria all around me and then the far-flung corners of the earth where nobody's concerned about those people. He wanted me to see it all. He wanted me to see it the way He sees it. Now, these, you could say, are the first instructions for the New Testament church. And so, right from the beginning, He's putting missions right before His disciples at the start. And immediately, it's global. From the very first instruction, it's global. It's a world vision. You say, well, you know, we're just a little church. That's our problem. That's what we think. We think we're little. You look down through the history of missions and most of the time it's been little groups of people that have done things that they write books about. You don't know what God could do with a little church like this or a little church like mine. Plus, maybe if we partnered together on something, get a project, pray about something, do it together. Like in when the, never mind, that's for a message later in the week. But anyway. But I guess what I wanted to do tonight was just get you and me to see the big picture. To see the world from heaven's viewpoint. And you know, when you look in your Bible, you find out that from the very beginning of the Bible, God had the whole world in mind. Even though many times He's only speaking to one individual, one family. He had the whole world on His heart. You go back to Genesis chapter 12, and I just want to show you, we're going to look at a lot of verses tonight, Lord willing, but it'll be less than an hour and 50 minutes, I hope. But it'll be Genesis chapter 12, look at verse number 1, Genesis 12, verses 1 through 3. Here's the Lord talking to Abraham. And right here, one of these first great promises in the Scriptures, Genesis chapter 12, you know the promise that he makes to Abraham, he says, just to save a little time, he calls Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, he comes into the land of Canaan, and it's there that God makes him this promise, and he said, although he probably made this promise to him beforehand, but he reiterates it here, I believe, and it says, and I will, in verse number three says, I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that cursed thee, and in thee shall all families, all families, the whole earth. See, right from the beginning, when God is getting ready to make a nation out of Abraham's descendants, right from the beginning, God has the whole world in mind. He had it in mind that through Abraham, through his seed, through Jesus Christ, through the gospel, the purpose of the gospel is that God is thinking. Do you think He knew the names of every family on the earth? He absolutely did. He knew the name of every family, every child, every mom, every dad. And you know that God was thinking about them and caring about them. He didn't see the earth the way the Hubble telescope might look at a planet or stars. I mean, He saw families. That's what God saw. He didn't see the seas, the mountains and everything. God saw families, people, souls. And in making this first great promise to Abraham, God already is showing his desire and burden that through Abraham's seed, he was going to bless all the families of the earth. Go over to Genesis chapter 22. Genesis chapter 22. You're familiar with that one, I hope, too, where Abraham offers his son Isaac. And after the Lord stops Abraham from offering his son Isaac, The angel in verse number 15, the angel of the Lord calls unto Abram out of heaven the second time and says, Because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thy only son, that in blessing I will bless thee, in multiplying I will multiply thy seed, etc. Verse 18, And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. Nations, by the way, are not countries. Nations are people groups. Nigeria is one country, but there's 582 people groups in Nigeria. God looks upon a nation as a people group. And, you know, politically, people have drawn boundaries and stuck all different kinds of nations inside a country. But when the Lord's talking about nations, He's talking about people groups. There are 7,000 of them. Oh, no, wait. I'll get the right number in a minute, but 7,000 languages. I think there's 16,000 people groups in the world. 16,000, over 16,000 people groups. And a little bit more than a half of them, more than a third have not been reached with the gospel. are unreached, are classified as unreached. To be classified like in mission terms, to be reached means that 1% of the population has a knowledge of Christ. So an unreached people group is less than 1% of that people group have any knowledge of Christ. In most cases, there's no Christians in the group. Thousands of groups like that. But God's burden and God's vision, God's heart was already toward the multitudes. Look over in Genesis chapter 26. Later God repeats this promise to Isaac. says basically the same thing that he had said to Abraham in Genesis chapter 26 at verse number 4. It said to Isaac, I'll make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven will give unto thy seed all these countries and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. So even, here's Isaac, think God's, you know, God is looking at Isaac, looking at that one family, him, his wife, his children, and so on and so forth, but God's heart, God's seeing it from heaven's vantage point. In making that promise to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob, do you know that God saw your family? because eventually you were one of those families that were blessed by the gospel, by Jesus Christ. And of course, the Lord sees the future, so when the Lord is seeing nations and families that are going to be blessed through what He's doing, He was seeing me and you. He was seeing, but not just me and you, not just me and you, but He was seeing the guy in Syria and Iraq and Kazakhstan and China and in Africa. and people groups that, in some cases, have never seen anything of modern, our modern conveniences. There are still many, many people groups around the world that live in isolation. You'd be surprised how still it's very, we were on a mission trip once years ago to the Philippines, and the Philippines is one of those countries that probably doesn't, I don't think, needs another American missionary. because there are so many great Filipino soldiers of Jesus Christ there. And we go to the Philippines every year, but we help the nationals. We just teach and help and encourage the nationals that are doing a great work over there. But on one of our trips over there years ago, we went into a very, very remote village. In fact, our church had raise the money to build a boat to get there because the only way to get there was on a river, the Agusan River, and we went there. It took us two days by boat to get up into this very, very remote area, and we went into a village there and preached in the home of a witch doctor in that town, and they told us in that town that we were the first white people that had ever been in their village. They had never seen anything like this before. I was like, what century am I living in? It was like, really? I mean, I didn't think that thing was possible. I mean, I just thought, well, it's all been covered. I mean, we're just, you know, we're taking care of the scraps now as a missionary effort. But no, there are still places around this world where nobody's heard the gospel, where people haven't seen the story of Jesus Christ. They have no idea how that they could have eternal life through Jesus Christ. And they never will hear. They may never hear unless somebody, unless somebody goes. Somebody has to go. But, you know, as you get further and further away from home, those obstacles and that fear, and there's many more reasons in our own heart just to stay put. It becomes much more of an intimidating task. Well, the Lord said the same thing to Jacob. You don't have to turn there, but go to Psalm 67. Psalm 67. I just want to show you again and again through the Scriptures here how the Lord just speaks about the whole world the whole earth praising Him. One of these days it will, praise the Lord. One of these days this entire planet is going to know Him. It's going to come a time in the millennium where there won't even be any preaching, because it says, you know, every man's going to know the Lord. They're going to know Him. The knowledge of the Lord is going to be from all over the globe. But notice in Psalm 67, verse number 1, God be merciful unto us and bless us and cause His face to shine upon us, Selah, that thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations. Now, God wrote that. That's the Spirit of God. He might have been speaking through the psalmist's mouth, but that's the Spirit of God, and that's the Spirit of God's desire, that's God's heart, that's what God sees, and that's what God wants. that the whole earth, all the nations, might know the saving health of the gospel. Brings health to your soul. And God wants every nation to know that. All these thousands of years later, 2,000 years since Jesus Christ went back to heaven, and there's still vast portions of this world that have no idea about who He is or why He came. Turn over to, oh, look at verse 4. Oh, let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for thou shalt judge the people righteously and govern the nations upon earth. Turn over to Psalm 96. Psalm 96. Look at verse 1. Psalm 96, verse 1. Oh, sing unto the Lord a new song. Sing unto the Lord, how much? How much of the earth? All the earth. Sing unto the Lord, bless His name, show forth His salvation from day to day. Declare His glory among the heathen. Declare His glory among the heathen? We think we've done our part to just declare His glory, gone to a street corner down here somewhere in town or in Detroit, and, no, God, remember, all four. Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost. It's all at the same time. The Lord wanted His glory declared among the heathen, among those that can never repay you, who will never come to church, never be able to help you in any way. You're gonna have to just spend and be spent. The Lord will reward you, of course. Look at, turn over to, while you're in Psalm 96, just jump down to verse number seven. Verse number seven, give unto the Lord, O ye kindreds. Kindreds is just another name word in the Bible for families, your kin. So give unto the Lord, O ye kindreds of the people. Give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name. Bring an offering, come into His courts. Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Fear before Him all the earth. Say among the heathen that the Lord reigneth. among the heathen, all the nations, all the world, all the kindred, all the families. You know, you're seeing again and again in the Scriptures, hundreds of these, God's big heart, God's vision, what God sees from heaven, what God wants from heaven. A church that has a vision beyond their front door, beyond their neighborhood. Two, if we're going to be, we like to say, churches like to say, they're missions-minded. But really to be missions-minded doesn't mean we got a bunch of pictures of missionaries on the board out there and we send them all a $50 check. That's not missions-minded. Missions-minded means up here, in my mind, and in my heart, I'm seeing what God sees. I'm looking at it, I'm looking at the big picture, and as a church, seeing it the way God sees it. Seeing the importance of this. Seeing it beyond your own immediate borders. Picturing yourself and thinking of yourself as having a global ministry. Not just sending a check to somebody, but having a part. Somebody said the real measure of a church is not its seating capacity, it's its sending capacity. That convicted me when I read that. the sending capacity. Because obviously right here in these words from Jesus Christ is this push that we must go. not just understand and agree with and say amen to this, but obviously, this was a command, in a sense, to go. Now, not everybody can go to the uttermost, but we all, all of us together have to think about the uttermost, pray for the uttermost, consider ourselves to be a church that has that as our goal and that as our vision, and be willing, if God should move in somebody's heart, that you'd be willing to go, even to the uttermost. That ought to be, wouldn't that be a blessing? If the Lord would raise up somebody out of here, to be a missionary somewhere. God's given us that privilege once already. We had one family go. We have our second family getting ready to go in May, and I'm hoping for another one soon after that. But that's our biggest joy. Our church knows that. There isn't anything that would thrill me any more than that, is to have our people leave the church under the right circumstances. Go somewhere. Take the gospel somewhere. We've even toyed around with, this is a real stupid, crazy idea. This is real stupid, but we've actually had this discussion in our deacons' meetings, believe it or not. I mean, the Lord has blessed us with a nice piece of property in New York City, completely paid for. We paid it off last month, completely paid off after 40 years in the ministry. And it's worth a lot of money. I won't tell you how much it's worth, but it's worth a lot of money, right? New York City, about four and a half acres. And I said to the guys one time in the deacon meetings, I said, you know what? What if we just sold it? Sold it and send as many families as we could with the money to the mission field as long as it would last. You think God would be mad at us if we did that? Think up in heaven, the Lord would be going, you stupid idiot. What in the world were you thinking? Why in the world would you do that? Spending all your money to go and reach the uttermost. I'm half about ready to do it. And our guys know that. and half of them are about ready to help me do it. But I'm not sure that that's what God wants us to do. But you know what? I don't think God would be upset with me if we did it. And I wouldn't care what anybody else thought about it anyway. Because I know, reading in this book, I know how my Savior thinks. I know how my Savior thinks. And He was always after those who really didn't have an opportunity to hear. I mean, people here in South Lyon have had a lot of opportunities to hear the gospel. Is there a shortage of churches in this part of the world? No. Not really, believe it or not, not in our part either. There's churches, there's places where people can tune into a radio, hear the gospel. They don't like the color of our carpet, they can go to another church, or find a church where they like the color of the carpet, and they can hear the gospel there. But I mean, there are still parts of this world, even parts of our own country, where there's no gospel witness. There is nobody there speaking up for Jesus Christ. If somebody in that town wanted to know about the Lord, there wouldn't be anybody they could talk to. And to really begin to understand missions, we just have to ask God to change the way we look at things. Change our viewpoint. Give us eyes like you have, Lord. Let us see things the way that you see things. Go to Psalm chapter 22. And you know what Psalm 22 is. Psalm 22 is about the crucifixion. And the first part of Psalm 22, it's the crucifixion from the Lord's viewpoint, right? These are His thoughts hanging on the cross. He lets you come inside His brain, in His mind. You get to see what He was seeing. And He even expresses in Psalm 22 what He was feeling on that cross. And it's an incredible psalm. And the first part of the psalm describes the suffering and the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. But then you get down, you get down to verse 21, for example, where here's just a cry for him to his father. Save me from the lion's mouth, for thou has heard me from the horns of the unicorn. And then the very next verse, it's like, wow, what happened between verse 21 and verse 22? Up until verse 21, He is on the cross, He's dying, He's forsaken, He's ridiculed, He's suffering, He's in shame. All of a sudden, verse 22, it's like, wow, there's a whole chapter missing in between those two verses. Well, in between those two verses is the resurrection. The resurrection is in there because in the next verse, starting in verse 22, he's resurrected. He's sitting in the midst. I will declare thy name unto my brethren. In the early part of the chapter, he's dying, he's crucified, but here he is in the midst of the congregation. In the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. Go down to verse 25. My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation. I mean, this is rejoicing. This is fellowship. This is the risen Christ in the last half of this chapter. And then you get down to verse 27 and notice it's, look what's on his heart. Look what's on his heart. All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord and all the kindreds of the nation shall worship before thee. So right here, that resurrected Savior, even here, He's thinking about the world as it turns to Him in worship. That's His heart. That was His desire. That's what He wanted. Go back to Psalm 2. Psalm 2 is another one of those Psalms that speaks about the Lord Jesus Christ. Psalm 2, verse number 7, it says, I will declare the decree The Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son, there's the Father speaking to His Son, this day have I begotten thee. That doesn't mean the virgin birth, that means the resurrection. Acts 13.33 says so. Acts 13.33 quotes that verse right there and applies it to the resurrection. So when it says, this day have I begotten thee, when John 3.16, His only begotten Son, it's talking about the resurrection, not the virgin birth. And so here is the Savior crucified, buried, and now risen. This day have I begotten thee, and what's the first thing after the resurrection? Verse 8 is right after the resurrection. The Father says, Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Right after the resurrection, what's on his heart? I want the whole world to benefit from what I just did on the cross. I want everybody. Remember that promise you made to Abraham, Father? Yeah. Remember that promise you made to Isaac and Jacob and everybody and David and everybody since then? Now that I'm risen, I'm claiming that promise. I want the heathen. I want the uttermost for my possession. Right out of the grave, that's what's on the Savior's heart. That's why soon after He came out of the grave, before He goes to heaven, He gave His disciples those instructions. Not to think about just you, yours, and your little thing around you. Expand your circle a little bit bigger. Get a burden beyond. Get a burden for your neighbors. Absolutely. Get a burden for the guy across the street. Get a burden for your town. Get a burden for this area of Michigan. But don't stop there. If you stop there, you stop short of what God wanted a church. He wanted the heartbeat of a church. If God is in the midst of it and His Spirit is driving it, then the heartbeat of a church is going to be for the uttermost as well. Not after you've spent everything on local missions, you know, we don't have a whole lot left, you know, no, this is supposed to be on my mind all the time, a part of our planning, a part of our prayers, a part of our budget, a part of everything, is that I gotta remember I have a responsibility, even if it's a little group of people, we have a responsibility for the whole world. You know what happens when you're little, when you're a small group, you think the big guys are gonna get it done. I can guarantee you the big guys aren't getting it done. Do you know that more money is spent going to missions conferences than is spent on missions? That's the honest truth. more money is spent on mission conferences, and the cost of getting there, housing, and all the expense of having it, hosting it, than is actually spent on missionary work itself. That's pretty sad. We love talking about it, we just don't like doing it. We love writing books about it, but we just don't want to do it. Because to do it, we've got to get out of our Jerusalem. And I don't like some of those people in Samaria. And I don't even know any of those people in the uttermost. You have to get out of your comfort zone. Your comfort zone is your Jerusalem. And we have to think in those terms. Why? Because your Savior thinks in those terms. Right out of the grave. Right out of the grave. He said, Father, I'll take the uttermost. I'll take the heathen. I'll take all those lost Gentiles around the globe. I'd like them for my inheritance. Remember, in Genesis chapter 23, Sarah dies. She's a picture of Israel. Abraham, picture of God the Father. What does God do in Genesis chapter 24? Abraham sends the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, his servant, a picture of the Holy Spirit, sends him out to get a bride for Isaac. It's like, immediately, Genesis chapter 23, Sarah dies. God's relationship with Israel, in a sense, broken for the New Testament period. Genesis chapter 24, a picture of the New Testament period, the Holy Spirit of God going out to get a bride for Jesus Christ. Genesis chapter 25, Abraham remarries, Israel revived, and God's relationship with Israel restored. But what's happening in Genesis chapter 24? What's the main work? What's the main work? What's the Spirit, what's that servant doing? What's he taking up all his time in Genesis chapter 24? That whole chapter is about God getting a bride for his son. That's what's on God's heart right now. That's what's on God's heart. We meet in a warehouse. We meet in a warehouse. And I love it that way. I love it that way. We have a gravel parking lot. We have the only gravel parking lot in New York City. It's against code. But because our building is so old, it's grandfathered in, and unless I change the building in some way, I get away with a gravel parking lot. They have tried and tried and tried and tried, but I can't afford it, and I wouldn't spend the money on a new parking lot, even though a couple of our guys have said, you know, Pastor, I don't know. I'd rather spend it on missions. I'd rather spend it on printing. We'd rather spend it in the gospel. And we do put a coat of paint on our building every now and then. We have an anniversary coming up in November. We're going to paint the building. And we're actually going to buy new carpeting for the first time in a long time. We'll get some new carpeting in there. But I like that we're in a warehouse. And we make it clear to our people, and our people know, the emphasis here is not on this. It's not on this. Because I guarantee you, do you know what they voted on or they're arguing right now in the Supreme Court? To make gay marriage legal nationally, a constitutional right. And somebody asked Obama a question and said, well, if it becomes a constitutional right, then would churches who refuse to do that be in danger of losing their tax-exempt status? He said, it's likely. Now, a year ago, more than a year ago, I drew up a plan, and I gave it to our deacons, and I called it a radical plan for First Bible Church in the last days. It included the sale of all of our property, liquidate everything, and put it into missions, and figure out a way, if it came to that, where we would just have to put our people, we have about 250 people, we'll just break it up and meet in homes. And I'm trying to get our people ready for this. I mean, should it come. That this wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. this might be the most exciting chapter in our church's history, is that, okay, I mean, I'm not promised a building in the New Testament. I mean, it's very convenient. I mean, it's very convenient being able to get everybody in one room at one time. It's very, you know, conducive, but the early church, you think they had, all right, they had, what, 3,000 people saved on the day of Pentecost, and then another 5,000 right after that. Do you think there was a building they could put 8,000 people in? When they were going house-to-house, they were going house-to-house. The church was meeting house-to-house. They weren't going knocking on doors house-to-house evangelistically. The church was scattered all over the city. Now, I'm not saying that that's what we should do or that should be part of our plan, but I've told our church, it wouldn't be a disaster if that happened. And I never expected it would be like this soon. And I read today, or yesterday, that somebody interviewed Obama and he said, well, it's possible. if it becomes the law of the land. And don't think it couldn't happen. You don't think, I tell you what, I couldn't afford the taxes on my property. I couldn't afford to maintain where we are if all of a sudden we lose, then you gotta start paying real estate tax. I don't know what the taxes are around here, but there's no way we could, we would just spend all of our offerings just paying the real estate taxes. That wouldn't be good, the Lord wouldn't want that. So I'm just saying, If you keep the thing that's first in God's heart, first in your church, then God will always bless it. Always bless it. If I put first what God puts second, third, fourth, or fifth down there, then there's something wrong. I've missed God's heart on the matter. but keeping that worldview, keeping that idea about the whole world. I wish we don't have time. I wanted to take you to Romans chapter 15. You could just mark it down if you're taking notes, but Romans 15 verses 8 through 12, Paul said, Paul was trying to explain that winning the Gentiles to Christ was not some afterthought with the Lord just because Israel fell. The Gospel went to the Jew first. Israel rejected Him. He came unto His own. His own received Him not. And then you look in the book of Acts, and about halfway through the book of Acts, you get to Acts chapter 8, and all of a sudden, the Gospel turns toward the Gentiles, the Samaritans, the Ethiopian, Cornelius the Italian, and so on and so forth. Then a Gentile church in Antioch, and then God saves an apostle, Paul, for the Gentiles. But in Romans chapter 15, Paul was explaining that that was not an afterthought with God. It wasn't just because, oh, look what happened to Israel. Okay, now what am I going to do? Well, I guess I have to go save the Gentiles. And Paul is showing in those verses, he quotes from the Old Testament. He only quotes four verses, but he could have quoted 40 or 50, but he quoted four to show that, no, in the Old Testament, like some of the verses I showed you tonight, no, this was on God's heart from the very beginning. God, from the very beginning, intended the gospel to go to the whole world. not just the nation of Israel, not just the city of South Lyon, but God has always had the whole world on His heart. That's been His burden. That's been His concern. I mean, even John 3.16, For God so loved my neighborhood. We like to take it, we like to emphasize the whosoever, because that's all about me. And that's where normally, that's where preachers put the emphasis. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever, see, whosoever, that's you. That makes the sinner feel important. And that's true. I'm glad that the Lord knew me, knew my need, and that anyone, anybody, whosoever can get saved. But you missed the big word there. The big word is the world. For God so loved the world. And you better think about this. You know what that means? That means God loved the world. God was not willing that anybody perish. He said in Ezekiel, he says, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked. I don't get any joy. Obama decides to spend some money and send some bombers or something and we wipe out a city or whatever in Iraq. We just bomb ISIS to pieces. Yeah, man, yeah. Teach them to. Nobody up in heaven is going, yeah, man, yeah. You know what happened? 20, 30, 40, 50 people who hate you, hate the gospel, hate Jesus Christ, but souls that Jesus Christ died for just went to hell. Just went to hell. Nobody up in heaven is going, yeah, man, I'll teach them. Get their politics right. See, Jesus Christ loves people that you hate. He loves them. And if a missionary had a burden and been willing to die for the gospel, you don't know. Somebody in that town might have gotten saved. If somebody would have been willing to risk it all, like missionaries of old did, like the Moravian missionaries did, like the pietists among the Lutherans, I mean, you start reading some missionary biographies and missionary history books, and you know what? You'll feel real, real small. It's good for us, because it makes me feel real small when I start reading those things. Because I read about farmers and carpenters and bricklayers who just left their businesses in the 1700s, got on a ship to a country they didn't even know how to speak the language, and just went there expecting to die. Expecting, not even expecting to come home again. The Moravians went expecting to die. In fact, the symbol of the Moravians, originally, was an ox on an altar. And the motto was, death or worship, ready for either. They went expecting. They left the shores of their country, sometimes left family, loved ones and everything else. and in some cases sold themselves into slavery to go into nations that were closed to the gospel. I mean, the problem is that we just don't see the world the way the Lord does, and we don't see the world the way many of our spiritual forefathers saw the world. Let's just say it bluntly. We don't care. That's the problem. We don't care. We really don't care. That's our problem. We don't care. That's my problem. I don't care. I'm not saying you. I told you this is for me tonight. The Spirit of God was kicking me in the head this afternoon. It's me. It's what my heart needed. I want to care. I want to care like my Savior cared. He looked over that city of Jerusalem. The Bible says, you know, it says He came near. He drew near, it says, and He beheld the city. And he wept. He knew he was going to be crucified there a few days later. I think he'd be angry. I can't believe they didn't, they don't love me, they won't receive me. He just wept. He wept. He was weeping because, he wasn't weeping because of his own misfortune. He was weeping because he said to them, you don't know the day of your visitation. You don't know that I'm here. You don't know the peace that I would have given you. You don't know the blessings that would have been yours. He wept over that city. Go back to Jeremiah chapter 13. You look through the scriptures and you know what? You can see here and there some of the men of God in this book that had God's heart on this issue. They had a burden. Their eye affected their heart, as the Bible says. Jeremiah chapter 13. Jeremiah was one of those. Remember when the disciples when Jesus asked his disciples, whom the men say that I am, whom the men say that I the Son of Man am, and one of the disciples said, well, they believe you're Jeremiah. Why would in the world would they think that Jesus was Jeremiah? That means there must have been something about the Lord Jesus that was like Jeremiah. What was the characteristic of Jeremiah? I mean, if you've read your Bible, you know that Jeremiah is sometimes called the weeping prophet. How many times in the book of Jeremiah does he just weep for the people? And Jeremiah chapter 13 is one of those instances, verse number 17, Jeremiah 13, 17, it says, But if you will not hear, verse 15 and 16, God tells him, Tell the people, Hear ye, give ear, verse 15, Be not proud, for the Lord hath spoken. Give glory to the Lord your God before He caused darkness. Because obviously if you reject the light that God gives you, then you stumble in the darkness. God will give you light, but if you reject that light, then you get darkness. And Jeremiah was sent to warn the people, just before their captivity, and to warn them. He preached hard and he was rebuked for it, he was persecuted for it. But he said, and here's the message that God says, you know, turn to the Lord, hear this, give ear before He caused darkness, before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains. And while you look for light, He turned it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness. Verse 17, Jeremiah says, if you will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride. Mine eyes shall weep sore. See, Jeremiah's attitude wasn't, you low life, you don't understand the risk I took coming here and preaching to you. You don't even appreciate it. You're ungrateful. No, it broke Jeremiah's heart to think about his own people, in this case, going to hell and turning away from the Lord. It broke his heart. Paul's, how many times in the Scriptures did the Bible speak about Paul's? He said he had great heaviness and continual sorrow in Romans chapter 9. In Acts chapter 20, speaking to the elders at Ephesus, he reminded them that he was there for three years and he said he had been there and taught them with many tears with many tears, twice he said that in Acts chapter 20, that as he worked among them and preached to them and taught them, he did so with tears, a burden, a broken heart for their condition, for their spiritual condition. We need to have that in our own life. We need to remember that God is not willing that any should perish, that he has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. And most of the time, it's an eye problem. Go to John chapter 4. And you know this story, so we won't take a lot of time with it tonight, but the story of the woman of Samaria. And the Lord went down there on His way to Galilee. He took a detour through Samaria. While He's in Samaria, His disciples go into town for some food. You know the story. And while He's there, a woman comes to the well to draw water in the middle of the day. The Lord begins to speak to her. She gets saved. And she's so excited about, she's met the Savior, and she goes back into town, and she brings all the men of the city out to see this Savior. And in the meantime, it says, in verse number 31, while these men are coming out of the city, walking across the fields, The disciples have come back from getting McDonald's or whatever they were doing, and they're just interested in food. And they wanted Him to eat. They went to get food. It's time for lunch. And the Lord makes this statement in verse number 32. He said, I have meat to eat that you know not of. Meat, something that sustains you, something that is necessary to your being. And he says, I have meat to eat that you don't know anything about. And he said down in verse number 34 what that was. It says, my meat is to do the will of Him that sent me. Remember, the Bible says Jesus, that the Father sent the Son, not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. That's why He was sent. He said, My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me and to finish His work. That was the thing that drove the Lord Jesus Christ, that motivated the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit, that urgency, inside the Lord was to do the will of His Father in heaven. And the disciples have got no clue. They're interested in food. They're interested in having a nice trip. They're going through Samaria. And meanwhile, the Lord has led this woman to Christ. She's gone back into town to tell all the men that she knew. They're on their way out to see the Lord for themselves. And that's when Jesus said these famous words in verse number 35, Say not ye There are yet four months and then cometh harvest. You know what he's saying? He said, aren't you in the habit of saying, well, it's not time to work yet? We got another four months to chill. You know, aren't you in the habit of saying that? There are yet four months and then cometh harvest. That's like you and me saying, you know, I've got time. I'm young. I didn't buy my first house yet. Need a new car. There's a whole lot of things I got to do. Got plans, man. I got plans for my life. I got dreams. I got an agenda. I'm going places. The problem is we're not going any place. We're just staying put when we were supposed to be going. And we make these same kind of excuses. I mean, it's not four months till harvest, but it's, you know, well, just till, you know, just till, you know, I make my first million, just till my kids get out of college, just till I get my house paid off. Then, then I'm going to, then I'm really, I'm going to do something, Lord. I'm going to get interested. I'm going to get burdened. You watch, Lord. You give me, you give me five more, you give me 10 more years, 12 more, 15 more years, Lord, you watch. I'm finally going to get serious about serving you. And it's just, and the Lord, of course, sees our heart. He knows we're just, you're making excuses. You're just making a stupid excuse. And that's exactly what the next verse says. Say not ye there yet four months, then cometh harvest. Behold, I say unto you, stop making that excuse. It says, lift up your eyes. The problem is that they weren't looking at the right thing. They're looking at their lunch. They're looking at something for themselves, their belly. And they don't even see what's happening around them. I mean, I picture, and I just picture that this is probably around the time that the men from the city are coming out across those fields, you know, in the middle of the day, probably got their white, you know, their robes on, like they would in that part of the world. And it probably looked like just a field of white as all these men are coming out to the city, from the city, to talk to Jesus Christ. And I think he's saying, you guys are looking in the wrong direction. You don't see what I see. This is the problem. We don't see what He sees. It's my problem. I don't see what He sees. A guy cuts me off in traffic, I don't see what the Lord sees. I definitely don't see what the Lord sees. I don't see anybody but just somebody who got in and slowed me down. I'm bad behind the wheel. My wife knows. I'm going to give an account at the judgment seat of Christ, but it's bad. I'd have a hard time giving a gospel tract to that guy, because right after I blew past him and ran him off the road, it's a little hard to, by the way, if you died today, would you go to heaven? There have been a lot of circumstances where my own behavior prohibited me from ever opening my mouth. Because I didn't see what Jesus saw. I didn't see what He saw. That's our problem as churches. We don't see what He sees. If you and I could see what He sees, you and I would do what He did. but we don't see it the way he sees it. That was the disciples' problem. They just didn't see it. In fact, these Samaritans weren't even anybody worth expending any gospel energy on. This was a group that I'm sure the disciples wouldn't have cared whether this group went to heaven or hell. But we don't see what Jesus sees. If we could see what he sees, we would see that there's a harvest all around us. I know we're coming down to the end of the last days, and I preach it, and I know the time is short. It's our theme verse at First Bible Church, Hebrews 10, 25, as you see the day approaching. We read it almost every Sunday morning, as you see the day approaching. Make sure you understand. Live with that day is approaching. Don't forget that. The coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. I know we're at the end, but that doesn't mean we just circle our wagons and stockpile some food in our basements, make sure you've got ammo, get your gun, because you're going to have to fight off the people coming for your food. I don't know if I hit a nerve here in Michigan. I actually preached at a guy's church in Maine. who had buried a 50-gallon drum of guns and ammunition in his yard, in the church yard. And they were ready, they were getting ready for the Holocaust. They were getting ready to fight it out with the, I don't know if they thought they were going through the tribulation or something, but they really believed that, you know, the economy was going to collapse and they were going to have to, you know, whatever those guys are. There's a show, something about on TV like that, you know, those guys that, what is that called? Huh? Trappers? Oh, okay, whatever that is. All right, but I hope that's not you guys. I hope that's not you. But you know what? I'm going to get off on that. I don't want to do that. I don't want to meddle. But anyway, if you and I could see what Jesus sees, then we would be doing what Jesus did. And our problem is our vision, it's our eyes. And it says, look at verse 35. Lift up your eyes and look on the fields. Look on the fields, look. Lift up your eyes and look. You have to look. You have to see it. You have to see, you have to ask God, let me see what you see. Let me see what you see. And you know what? If God answers that prayer in your life, your world will be different. You will be a different person, but you gotta pray that. Lord, let me see what you see. Let me see what you see the next time I go to the grocery store. The next time I see that person in line at the post office, or let me see that co-worker of mine, or that student that I go to school with, or whatever it is. Let me see what you see. Let me see them the way you see them. And ask God to give you the burden that you ought to have for them. These guys really, the truth is, they just didn't care. They didn't care. And then the Lord reminded them in verse 36, "...he that reapeth receiveth wages and gathereth fruit unto life eternal, that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together." Alright, reaping and sowing and reaping and rejoicing. You know what verse that brings to mind, right? Psalm 126 in verse 5 and 6. All those words are in that verse. It says, "...they that sow in tears." It doesn't just say sow. In the parable of the sower, you don't know that he's going out with tears. The Lord didn't tell you that. He just shows you a sower that went out to sow some seed. But you didn't know that that sower, if that sower is Jesus Christ and you know it was, you didn't know that he was going out with tears. So it doesn't tell a church just sow. It says sow with tears. And where do the tears come from? It's seeing what Jesus sees. Jeremiah saw it. Paul saw it. David in Psalm 119 said his eyes just ran rivers of water because of those that did not keep God's Word. I mean, we need that heart. We have to have that heart. We have to have our eyes moistened with those tears. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth Not just the going forth, but the weeping, the burden, the compassion, the understanding of that person's need. Remember, they are where you were. You were once lost. Now you're found. They're like those beggars in the Old Testament that went out and found all that wealth, that treasure. The enemy had run away and they found all of this and they said, this is not right for us just to keep this to ourselves. The city is starving. We gotta go in and let them know what's out here. But unfortunately, most of us are like those four beggars. We just can't believe this wealth, this spiritual wealth and blessing that we have as Christians. Like, this is amazing, this is wonderful. It is wonderful. It is wonderful. It's the most wonderful thing that could ever happen to anybody. To be saved, to be our sins forgiven, to have a purpose in life that actually matters, to have a Savior that will never leave you, never forsake you, to be given a responsibility for doing things that are dear to His heart. That life of a Christian is the greatest life that anybody... I'm saved 40 years now, and I'll tell you, I would have gotten saved sooner if I would have known it was like this. I wouldn't have been so stupid to have waited. And yet, sometimes we're like that, like those beggars. We've got all these blessings, but what about all those people that don't have any idea what it means, what it feels like to know your sins are forgiven? What it feels like to know for sure when you put your head down on that pillow at night, that if something happens to you, you're gonna wake up in heaven? You can't buy that kind of peace with all the money in the world. and there are people all around us, in your Jerusalem, in your Judea, and in those pockets of Samaria, and in the uttermost parts of this earth, that have no idea what you've been given, your blessings. Are we special? Is there some reason, I mean, is it because God just loves Americans more than He loves, you know, people in South America? He just says, He loves democracy, is that what it is? He loves that red, white, and blue, is that what it is? No, no. We were blessed, we were fortunate. because somebody paid the price, brought the gospel to our shores, and somebody brought the gospel to your neighborhood, somebody brought the gospel to you personally. You were blessed. And you know, you owe a great debt because of that. You owe a great debt. You'll spend the rest of your life paying that debt back. Paul said, I am debtor. You owe a great debt. But you'll never see it and understand it unless the Lord opens your eyes. I got saved almost 40 years ago. I grew up in a Christian home, actually. My mom and dad were saved, my dad was the choir director in the church, and my mom was a Sunday school teacher, led the missionary society, and it wasn't a real strong King James, they used the King James Bible, my pastor was actually a Methodist, so he didn't believe in eternal security, but believe it or not, in our church, it was a big church, I heard in my church as a kid, B.R. Lakin, Hyman Appelman, These names might not mean anything to you, but some of you would know those names. John R. Rice, Curtis Hudson, came through our church and preached in our church. I mean, these were, in their day, great men of God, great preachers. I mean, evangelistic, soul-winning. I mean, they had the hand of God on their lives. I sat as a kid and sat and listened to these guys preach and never moved my heart. I grew up lost, out of a Christian home, moved away from Ohio as soon as I could, right after high school, got away, moved to New York City, Lived like a stupid idiot for a number of years. Ended up, because of some real problems in my life, trouble in my life, I ended up moving back to Ohio. And a crisis in my life. There was a really, can't even describe it all to you right now, but the bottom just literally dropped out of my life. And my younger brother David had gotten saved a few months earlier. And probably maybe one of the worst weeks of my entire life. when I didn't even want to live, didn't even want to, I mean, everything I hoped for came crashing down. There's a knock on my door, and my younger brother David is standing at my door. Open the door, I got long hair, beard, living like a heathen, breaking my parents' heart, and my brother is standing there, open the door, and my brother is standing there going, Michael! You need to get saved. Tears come down. You need to get saved. What is the matter with you? You know, he could have handed me a gospel track. He could have handed me a Bible. Wouldn't have mattered to me. I'd read it all. I'd heard it all. He probably could have given me a gospel track and said, Mike, read this. You know, it'll tell you how to get to heaven. I'm concerned about you, brother. It would have gone in the trash. But you know what? You know what killed me? Those tears. Those tears got me. I couldn't argue with those tears. I couldn't argue with my brother's broken heart for my soul. And I knew he was right. I knew I needed to get saved. But all the gospel tracts in the world wouldn't have pushed me over that edge. It was his burden for me. It was his tears. And I ended up in church two days later. And two days after that, I got saved. But you know what it did? You know what did it? His tears. And I think that's missing. And it's because we don't see the way the Lord sees. We don't see what He sees. He could look at a city of Jerusalem and just weep. Because He saw, He saw the heart, He knew the heart, He knew the need. He saw them as souls headed for hell if something didn't happen to change the course of their life. Half the time I see people just, you're in my way, especially in New York. Things happen very fast and you can't be slow in New York. People don't want to stand in line. People don't want to wait for anything. The light turns green. There's 15 horns honking. It's just the way of life. We're used to it. And so you're in my way. Get out of my way. And I see my own heart has grown cold. It can, it has, and does. I need the Lord to constantly break my heart, break my heart, put the tears back in my heart, put the tears in my eyes. We'll wrap it up here. Go to Revelation chapter 3. You remember what's wrong with the Laodicean church? One of the things wrong with the Laodicean church? You know, that's the latency in church, that's the Christianity of these last days. Say, well, that's the Methodists, that's the Presbyterians, that's the Catholics. No, it isn't. It's us. That's not them. That's God's people. He wants fellowship with them. He doesn't want fellowship with a bunch of lost religious people. He's not trying to knock at anybody's door and come in and have sup and sup with them. I know we use Revelation 3.20 as a salvation verse, but that's not a salvation verse. That's God's people that have just lost fellowship with Him. They've forgotten who He is. But remember what it says in Revelation chapter 3 about the Laodicean times and that Laodicean spirit which can creep into a church and creep into your life and your home a lot faster than you think. Revelation chapter 3, you remember how it describes this is the Christianity of the last days. This is what you have to resist. This is the spirit that you have to resist as a Christian. It's not the Democrats. or the liberals, or I don't know, maybe you're all Democrats here, I don't know, it doesn't matter, but that's not the problem. It's this Laodicean spirit. That's the real enemy. That's the enemy, because it creeps in, it lulls us all to sleep, we get comfortable, we get complacent, we don't have a broken heart anymore, and to be honest, we just don't care anymore. That's this church. They didn't really need anything. They didn't think they needed anything. Oh, they might have needed, you know, new clothes, a house. It's not talking about that. When they said they have need of nothing, it meant they had need of nothing that was important to God. They didn't feel any need of what God had to offer them. Grace? I don't really need that. Doing fine without that. Prayer? Obviously don't need that. Maybe some study and meditation in the Word of God? I don't really need that. We're getting along fine without that. Church is doing well? It's just machinery. It'll keep doing what it's supposed to do. We say it all the time at our church. We know how to go through the motions of churchianity. We can do that. I don't want that. I don't want to have that on a Sunday. I don't want two hymns and a message and an invitation and then go home. I want God to show up. I want God to be there. If God decides to turn the thing upside down and do it differently, I would love that. That's fine. But the Lord has to be in it. But the Laodicean church, it doesn't even know that it's in this condition. It says, verse 17, Because thou sayest, I am rich. And Christians certainly are. I don't even want to bore you, but I brought a bunch of statistics about the wealth of Christians compared to the amount of money that goes into worldwide missions. It would embarrass us all in here. It would shame us all. We'd feel small, much, much smaller about ourselves. The typical Christian today spends very little on getting the gospel to the unreached. We spend very little. Less than a percent of all the wealth in Christian hands, less than a percent goes into missions. That's tragic. Think about it. That's downright criminal. Can you imagine being at the judgment seat of Christ and you're going to face the one who the first thing out of the grave he wanted was the heathen for his possession? And you're going to have to answer. You're going to have to answer some questions at the judgment seat. We might preach on that one of these nights. But notice what it says. It says verse 17, worth a lot of attention, but notice what he says in verse 18, "...I counsel thee to buy of me gold, tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich, and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear." And the very last thing, "...anoint thine eyes with eye salve." You know what that eye salve is? I don't think that's visine. That eye salve is the salve that God provided, the tears. Anoint your eyes with eye salve. How long has it been since you really wept over somebody's soul? How long has it been since you really cared about somebody you love whether they went to heaven or hell or not? How long has it really been since you really were that concerned to the point of tears over anything other than your own problems? We cry over our own problems real easy. We wail like little babies. whose diapers need to be changed. Don't you see what's going on in my life? Yeah, he does, but he also sees what's going on in the lives of a billion other people who have never heard about your Savior. It puts our problems in perspective when we realize the same God that's looking over me and watching me and helping me is also looking down on a thousand villages. where people are in the depths of depravity and heathenism and darkness and blindness and have no idea that there was a Savior that came and died for them. It makes my problems that I cry about so much seem, I don't know, I don't even like now, I don't even want to mention them. I want to get my heart right. I want to get my prayer life right. I want the tears back in my eyes. I want to see the way Jesus Christ sees. It'll transform your life and it'll transform your church if you pray that way and ask God to do that for you. All right, well, let's quit. Last verse. I'm done. Proverbs chapter 24. Let's go there. Proverbs chapter 24. Look at verse number 11. If thou forbear. Forbear means to delay, abstain, refuse, or avoid. Forbear. If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, you could have helped. Could have, but didn't. Obviously you wouldn't be saying this to somebody who could not have helped. But if you were in a position to have helped in some way, and you forbear, you delay, you refuse, you avoid, you abstain, to deliver them that are drawn unto death and those that are ready to be slain, if thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not, didn't really, wasn't really aware of that, and I had no idea. Doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? Doesn't the Lord see it for what it really is? It's just an excuse. You had to know that not everywhere in the world did they have the understanding and the light that you have here. You had to be aware of that. You can't fool the Lord into saying, well, Lord, I really didn't know it was that bad. It said, doth not he that pondereth the heart know it? And doth not and he that keepeth thy soul? Boy, isn't that a rebuke. The one that knows you and the one that's taking care of you, doesn't He know? All right, He's keeping your soul. He's protecting you. He's sheltering and He's a refuge for you and your sins are forgiven and you're safe. But then the Lord said, you didn't do anything to help those who are in danger. He says, remember, I'm the one that's keeping your soul and I'm the one that ponders the heart, don't I know it? It says, "...doth not He know it, and shall not He render to every man according to his works?" We need to see the way the Lord sees. We need to care the way the Lord cares. We need to do what the Lord did. He promised us the provision, the power. He promised to enable us. He promised to protect us. But the problem is, too many times we're just like His disciples in John chapter 4. We really don't care. And that's sad, because you know what? The time to care is running out. Like, I tell our guys all the time, you want to do something big for God? You want to do something like crazy radical for God? Don't wait. Don't wait. Do it now. You can never serve the Lord too early. You can never sacrifice too early. I know there's training and you've got to be equipped and you've got to learn some things, but you know what? Most of us learn, we know more than enough to do something. We know more than enough to at least have done more with our Jerusalem and our Judea. Maybe you're not geared up and ready quite for the uttermost personally as an individual, but you know what? You could do more with what you know already if we just cared like we ought to, if we could see the way the Lord sees. If He could show us the big picture, then may the Lord just get the glory if that should happen in our hearts. Amen? Let's bow our heads.