The Book of Acts, Chapter 1. The music has been especially good this morning and it's been a blessing to my heart. I hope that the Word of God will be a blessing to all of our hearts. It's good to have some folks visiting with us today. It's already been mentioned. We've got the Landeses over here on this side with the Make a Timothy today. And they're set up down there in Child's Hall. but also we have Brother Queter with us today. Queter, Queter, however you wanna say it, Matt Queter with Baptist Mission, Two Forgotten People. He is their representative that goes around and he's with us today and so you might be wanting to talk to him. He's this guy right down here with the shiny head, okay? Okay, I know about shiny heads, but anyway, it's good to have him visiting with us today. I don't know what I'm going to do if I need a drink of water. I'm looking up here and there were four different things of water here. And I know Mrs. Bailiff took one of them. But I'm hoping that none of these were something that Brother Hankey drank out of. If I need one, I might actually be sharing something with him. I don't know. It's fine. As far as I know, it's fine. OK, good enough. All right. So they do look like they're OK, but we'll be fine. I'm not going to drink all four or all three of this in here, that's for sure. But probably not any of them, but we'll see what we're going to do anyway. And it's good to have you folks visiting with us today, OK? And it's good to have everybody here, and I'm glad to be here. Last semester, I preached a sermon. The Lord had laid on my heart about the burden or the challenge of everywhere. Today's kind of a follow up on that. What I'd like to preach about today is the challenge of the uttermost. And you say, well, they sound like they're the same. Not quite, but we're going to see if we can make some sense out of this. And so let's start where you first find this. And it's just verse six of chapter one down to verse eight. And this is where we find the uttermost part of the earth. 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, but ye shall receive power. After that, the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me. both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth. There it is. And unto the uttermost part of the earth. In the Greek construction, it's the word eschatos, which just means the last. the last of the earth, the very last place that you could go to. That's what the intent that the Lord had when he gave this particular command unto us. I have three points and then a lot of application. I like the way, you know, Dr. Love did that the other day where he said, now I'm going to meddle, okay, and I'm going to try to meddle in a positive way. But at the same time, I have three points that we need to consider first when we're thinking about the uttermost. Point number one, Jesus is, right now, the rightful sovereign of the uttermost parts of the earth. Right at this moment, he is the rightful sovereign of the uttermost parts of the earth. Psalm 2, if you'd turn there please, and let's look at that passage in particular. Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed. And before I read further, let me say that what you have presented here is like a small drama, a setting that is given there. On the one side, you have the kings of the earth. They have set themselves. The book of Acts chapter four says that they were standing, standing in a set manner. They were setting themselves against the Lord, that would be God the Father, because it's the Trinity here, and against his anointed, that's the Messiah, that's the word, that would be Christ. So on this side would be the Lord, God the Father, and Christ. God the Son, the Lord Jesus. So these kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, this is what they say, let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us. And if you know of anything that's going on in America today, you know that's what the kings of the earth are trying to do today. The talking heads on the TV, the people in academia, the people that are just in any kind of a mover or shaker type of position in society in the world today. They are taking counsel against the Lord and against his anointed and saying, we don't want you to have anything in our lives. We want your bands, that which ties us, we want those things to be cast away, the cords cast away from us. But verse four says, he that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. He doesn't really think it's a comedy, but this is like a laugh of incredulity. He just really can't hardly believe that they think they can actually do this. And so it's something that, if you can put it on that terms, he shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision, and then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. God has some things to say to the kings of the earth that have set themselves against the Lord and against his anointed. And this is what he says. He says, yet. have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. And if you can see it in your mind's eye, it would be as though God the Father was saying to these kings that have set themselves, I have set my king, and that would be the Messiah. I have set my king, mine anointed, I have set him on my holy hill of Zion. He will rule this world. and he is this world that, okay, how to put it into words? I mean, he is the rightful sovereign of this world, and you are not, even though you've set yourself up to be king. Then, the son, the Messiah, the anointed one here, he then speaks in verse 7, and he says, I will declare the decree, the decree, the Lord hath said unto me, thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. So it is as though, if you can picture it again in your mind's eye, that God the Father said the first thing, and then God the Son says, Father, let me give them the decree that you gave to me, that they might understand it, and then he pronounces it to the kings of the earth. I will declare the decree the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee, ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and notice, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron. Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. And so the advice is, be wise now therefore, O ye kings. Be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son lest he be angry and he perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little. And then it says, blessed are all they that put their trust in him. The idea here is that the uttermost parts of the earth are His possession. They have been given to Him by God the Father and He is the rightful sovereign over the uttermost. Psalm 72. David wrote Psalm 72 to his son Solomon. But even though it is written to Solomon, it is nonetheless a messianic psalm. The things that are said there, what David was wishing and praying for his son, would be ultimately fulfilled in Solomon's descendant, who would be the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay, anyway, as this is given, it starts in verse one of chapter of Psalm 72. Give the king thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness unto the king's son. He shall judge thy people with righteousness and thy poor with judgment. The mountains shall bring peace to the people and the little hills by righteousness. He shall judge the poor of the people. He shall save the children of the needy and shall break in pieces the oppressor. They shall fear thee as long as the sun and the moon endure throughout all the generations. He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass as showers that water the earth. In his days shall the righteous flourish and the abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth. Can you get the idea that it is not just for Solomon? that this is also a messianic psalm and is talking about when the Messiah comes. Verse eight, he shall have dominion also from sea to sea and from the river unto the ends of the earth. They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him and his enemies shall lick the dust. The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents. The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts, yea, All kings shall fall down before him. All nations shall serve him. For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth, the poor also, and him that hath no helper. He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence, and precious shall their blood be in his sight. And he shall live, and to him shall be given the gold of Sheba. Prayer also. shall be made for him continually and daily shall he be praised. There shall be a handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains. The fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon and they of the city shall flourish like the grass of the earth. His name shall endure forever. His name shall be continued as long as the sun, and men shall be blessed in him. All nations shall call him blessed. Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things. And blessed be his glorious name forever, and let the whole earth be filled with his glory, amen and amen. The prayers of David, the son of Jesse are ended. It is obvious reading through this and knowing it to be a messianic psalm that you can see on several occasions there the mention of the fact that the entire world belongs to him. and that the entire world must be in obedience to him and praise him and worship him and receive from him their salvation. Jesus is right now the rightful sovereign of the uttermost. Psalm 22, if you turn to Psalm 22, which we all recognize as one of the best and greatest of the Messianic Psalms, it is as though the Lord Jesus Christ is giving to us an early vision of what the suffering on the cross that he would endure would be like. I don't know if I said that just exactly a simple way, but I just put it this way, that Psalm 22 is like the Lord Jesus Christ hanging on the cross and what he was experiencing. You recognize the first verse, of course, in 22. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me and from the words of my roaring? Oh my God, I cry in the daytime and thou hearest not, and in the night season, and am not silent. But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in thee, they trusted and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee and were delivered, they trusted in thee and were not confounded. But I am a worm. and no man, a reproach of men, and despise of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn. They shoot out the lip. They shake the head, saying, and this is exactly what the leaders of the Jewish people did when they were gathered there below the cross of Jesus. He trusted in the Lord that he would deliver him. Let him deliver him, seeing he delighteth in him. But thou art he that took me out of the womb. Thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's breast. I was cast upon thee from the womb. Thou art my God from my mother's belly. Oh, be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is none to help. Many bulls have come past me. Strong bulls of Bashan have besat me round. They gaped upon me with their mouths as a ravening and a roaring lion. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax, it is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws." And I think you remember that the Lord Jesus Christ on that day said, I thirst. And thou hast brought me into the dust of death. For dogs have come past me. The assembly of the wicked have enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones. They look and stare upon me. They part my garments among them and cast lots upon my vesture. But be not," you know that happened too, right? Okay. But be not far from me, O Lord, O my strength. Haste thee to help me. Deliver my soul from the sword, my darling from the power of the dog. Save me from the lion's mouth, for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorn. And I'm sure that's what they felt like when he had those spikes driven through his hand. I will declare thy name unto my brethren. In the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. Ye that fear the Lord, praise him. All ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him and fear him. All ye the seed of Israel. For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither hath he hid his face from him. But when he cried unto him, he heard. When he said, it is finished, he heard, see. For he hath not despised nor afflicted. He heard, verse 25, my praise shall be of thee in the great congregation. I will pay my vows before them that fear him. Now notice we're coming into it here. What I'm getting at here, we're about to see it. The meek shall eat and be satisfied and they shall praise the Lord that seek him. Your heart shall live forever, praise God. and all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nation shall worship before him. For the kingdom is the Lord's, and he is the governor among the nations. Can you not see it? When the Lord said, it is finished, and said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. At that moment, what was he thinking? He was thinking, verse 27, All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. It's gonna happen. And as it says in verse 28, for the kingdom is the Lord's, and he is the governor among the nations. All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship. All they that go down to the dust shall bow before him. And none can keep alive his own soul. A seed shall serve him. It shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. They shall come and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born that he hath done this. There is much in this passage. But if you would just please concentrate on the fact of verse 28. for the kingdom is the Lord's and he is the governor among the nations. I say to you again that Jesus is right now the rightful sovereign of the uttermost parts of the earth, not just Lattimore and not just Shelby and not just the United States of America, even though that is included in this, but it is the entire world that is on his heart and was on his heart when he was hanging on that cross for you and for me. the Moravians back in the 1700s, those German believers that were just so wrapped up in the teaching of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. They had had days and months and weeks in which they meditated upon it, and they gave themselves completely to the thought. Yesterday we heard a wonderful sermon about that. when Brother Hanke spoke to us here. And we hear a lot of good preaching and we think a lot about the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord, but let's take it further than that. We have to see that the Lord deserves to be praised for what he has done in every single part of the earth, even to the uttermost. He deserves that praise. So, when the Moravians went forth as missionaries, and they went so many places, and so many of them went and just gave their lives to do it, and I mean, what was their motto? What did they say to one another? We go, this was their motto. We go to win for the lamb that was slain, the reward of his suffering. The reward of his suffering is the uttermost parts of the earth, every bit of it. It belongs to him and he wants that and they were going to win for him because he is worthy the reward of his suffering. Matthew 28, 18, 19, and 20 is still in the book. It says, all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations. That means all ethnos, all people groups in the entire world. This is what our Lord is desiring. I have them. They are mine. They have been given to me. I have paid the price for their salvation. This doesn't sound very Calvinistic, does it? Okay. I have paid for this. It is something that belongs to me. Now go ye therefore and teach all nations. It's not a suggestion. It is a command from our sovereign that has said, I am the rightful sovereign of the uttermost. Point number two, but right now, Right now, Satan is the usurper king of the uttermost part of the earth. You must see this. Satan is the usurper king of the uttermost. Galatians chapter, excuse me, not Galatians, I'm getting there. Ephesians chapter two explains this very well. It says about us who are saved, you hath be quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins. That's what we were before we got saved. We were dead in our trespasses and our sins. But God made us alive. You hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins. But then it describes the way that we used to live. Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also we all had our conversation in times past. And I think many of you recognize that what verse two and verse three is talking about is the fact that Satan is the one who is the god of this world, the prince of the power of the air, that now has his has his dominion, has his rule over this world as a usurper. He doesn't belong here, but he has it. He has that right this minute because we are giving it to him as humans, I'm talking about in general. Praise God, verse four is there, but God, who is rich in mercy for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, for by grace are you saved, and hath raised us up together and made us to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness towards us through Christ Jesus, for by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. And we like to camp on those verses which are very good verses and a great blessing to us, but we are forgetting that we lived in a sin-cursed world. We're forgetting that we're living in a world that is controlled by Satan as the usurper king of the uttermost. 1 John chapter 5 and verse 19 says something very simply, and we know. There's two things that he mentions in that verse. Number one is that we are of God. We who have believed Him, we are of God. But the second thing that is known is that the whole world lieth in wickedness. In the Greek construction, the word wickedness has the definite article. The meaning of that, it is a person. The whole world lieth, lies in the bosom of the wicked one is the force of that verse. He has it. He has the world. He has it by a tail. He has it and it does his will. Okay. He's lying right there in his bosom. That's the force of that verse. He's got the whole world in his hand. Okay, I'm not gonna sing any more than that. Okay, but who has the whole world in his hand right now? It is Satan that has the world in his hand. He's the usurper king. Now I'm going to tell a story, and I hope this, if you've got a queasy stomach, that it won't be too tough on you here. So just, I give you the warning ahead of time about that. But what it is, when we lived in Korea, the area that we lived in, the church was here, the Korean pastor was there. We lived out by the gate of the church. You closed the gate at night, you opened it up in the morning. Right outside our gate, as you walked across the little road that was there, there was a hillside and it was terraced off with rice paddies. And that land was owned by the local prison. Every so often they'd bring prisoners out there and they would work the rice paddies. There would be a guard up there with a gun, a rifle that was, you know, ordered to shoot to kill if they tried to walk away. So here's my wife doing her laundry down here. And right there's a guy with a gun. But we were quite safe. And incidentally, where guns are, there is safety. We won't go further than that. I'm trying not to be political here. But anyway, that's what we experienced there. But here on that land that was owned by the prison, Down on this end, about 50 feet from our gate, and that meant about 60 feet from our bedroom window, was these squatters. These were a couple of real poor people that had moved in on that land and they had picked up just materials wherever and quote unquote built a house. It wasn't a house, it was a hut of sorts. And they actually had somehow tapped into somebody else's electricity, and they had one single light bulb that was shining inside of that hut. And they would carry water up there from a public spigot, and they lived there. The man, I considered him to be quite lazy. He would never talk to me, because the way he lived and everything, he just would, I'd try to talk to him, I couldn't. But the way he made a living was raising dogs. These dogs were not raised because they were going to sell them down at Petsmart or something like that. These dogs were being raised to be butchered and to be sold on the market and to restaurants and the like. Yes, indeed, Koreans do eat dog. The men eat the dog, the women don't. The men do because they think it gives you really male stamina and that kind of thing if you eat dog meat. I don't know where they got that idea but they got it. But anyway, he would raise these dogs from puppies up to a certain age and then he would prepare them to sell to a restaurant. What he did was they would strangle the dog. And you strangled the dog because you wanted the blood to stay inside the meat. And you would let the dog get kind of cold before you did anything else with it, okay? And so then, you know, they would, we always knew when they were doing it because it got kind of quiet. It wasn't the barking anymore and then you could smell the fact that he had a fire going and he was singeing the hair before he took him down to the market. Okay, now I'm past that story. So, some of you are okay, right? You're okay, right? Okay, maybe you're not okay. Okay, you're saying fluffy. Okay, whatever. But I got thinking about one day and I go, that's it. He's just like Satan. He doesn't own that land. He's a squatter. He has no right to it. And there was a day came in which the owners or the government came in and kicked them off that land because the land was owned by the government. And that's the way it is here right now. Jesus is the owner of this world. He is the rightful sovereign of the entire world. But right now there's a squatter. And that squatter is going around killing people and letting them get cold in his grasp and then singeing the hair off of them just so that he can have his desires fulfilled. That's what's going on. I am thankful that the Lord Jesus Christ is coming again and getting rid of the squatter. I am. But right now, folks, right now, point number two, Satan is right now the usurper king of the uttermost. He is here. So point number three now, point number three, and I think you probably guessed this, Jesus wants us. right now to be the reclaimer of the uttermost. Back there in Acts chapter one, verse eight, it says, both Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth. You know, we like to break that down. We like to say, well, I'm going to minister to Jerusalem or, and if I have time, I'll minister to all Judea and Samaria. And if I'm called to be a missionary, I will go to the uttermost. The Lord Jesus Christ never looked at it that way. The construction is that he looked at it as one unit. It is both, and, and, and. He looked at it as being all at the same time, all as one unit. Ye shall be witnesses unto me to all of it. And it does mean all of it. Now if there's one thing that holds us back from doing missions, In the United States of America, it is the fact that we don't understand that verse of what Jesus intended as he gave that simple command. We like to do things in order. We like to chop it up when the Lord never intended for it to be chopped up. He wants it all. Let me just tell you, he wants it all. All power is given, all authority is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and preach and teach all nations. Teach all nations. Mark 16, go ye therefore and preach the gospel to every creature. He wants the uttermost. And he wants everything between here where you are and the uttermost. In fact, he considers us to be the uttermost. He considers it all to be all one unit, if you can just get that into your mind. But there are attitudes, and this is where I'm gonna meddle. Okay, I'll tell you right now. This is attitudes that hinder our obedience to our sovereign Lord's orders. Number one, we will send somebody as soon as somebody comes around and contacts us about going philosophy. You say, okay, okay, is that really out there? You better believe it. You see, in the early church, the reason why they went everywhere was because directionally, that's what they thought. Here they are, a church, and the church thought, we have to go. It's very simple, you know? It's not complex at all. I'm here, and they're over there. I know the Lord, they don't, I go. but now our churches are waiting. They're sitting back and they're waiting. Okay, we're here and we're thankful that we know the Lord. And if somebody comes along and sort of impresses us that they want to go, well, we'll send that person. If we can, we'll send them. And so we're waiting for the missionary to come around and somehow impress this church or this pastor that, you know, Hey, here I am. I'm on deputation. I would like to go to such and such a country. What do you think? Let's look you over. What school did you go to? We do this kind of a number where the direction now has gotten reversed. Instead of it being church, Going, it's now church, waiting until somebody comes along who says, I would like to go, and then they'll decide whether they will send or not send. Now, I know this isn't a popular thing to say, and I hope you won't crucify me for saying this, but we're doing it all wrong. I'm serious. It's supposed to be that the impetus For preaching the gospel originates in the local church. And we talk about that and we don't practice it. May I just say that the emperor has no clothes. If you know what I'm talking about. Okay. Don't explain it. I'd never mind. Okay. So I mean. It's supposed to come from us. Every time you look back in mission history, when we actually did some things, it started with a pastor in a local church that got a burden for the world and said, well, let's try to do something. And next thing you know, great movements come from that into China. I mean, all of Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos and those countries down there, who reached them first? Well, there was this preacher, and he was in New York City, and his name was A.B. Simpson, and he got a burden for the Lord, and he got a burden for the world. And from him, being just a simple preacher of the word of God, his influence meant that the entire Christian and Missionary Alliance movement got going, and they were the ones that reached that part of the world. I'm sorry they weren't Baptists, I wish they were, but God used them anyway, okay? And God got them there. If you meet somebody from those parts of the world now that is a Christian, they are the fruit of a man that was a pastor in New York City. And he did a lot. You might know some of the other CNMA type people like, you know, A.W. Tozer or F.B. Meyer. Some of those guys, you know, they knew the Lord and they walked with the Lord, but they were influenced by A.B. Simpson. You see that? And you have some of his songs in our songbook. They're in there. Okay, so William Carey. Who supported William Carey? Who was behind that? Those pastors were behind it. Did William Carey do deputation? No. Who did the deputation for William Carey? The pastors did the deputation. They went out to other churches and raised the funds to send him. It was going from this side to that side. But now we're waiting, we're waiting, we're waiting. We're all the time waiting for somebody to come around. Missions conferences. Missions conferences are great. Mission conferences are wonderful. But here's what happens in a mission conference. I've been in so many of them. We put them on here. You hear about the need. We talk about it. You get impressed. You feel a tug. And you think, oh, man, missions is really great. But if you don't do something about it, then what have you done? You've done nothing. And yet some people think that because we had a mission conference that somehow that counts, it does count, but it's just the first step. I mean, if you had a mission conference and then you didn't do anything with it, what can I say? You didn't do anything. You just think that you did something because you felt something. But feeling something doesn't do anything. You have to get some action there. I told you, I'm meddling. I'm sorry. I have to do it sometimes. I get it on the inside and I just got to let it go, all right? You know when you preach. You've got intellect, emotion, and will. You're going after the will of a person to change, right? But to get to that will, you have to go through the intellect and the emotions first, okay? And you know what's sneaky about the sin nature? The sin nature really controls, not just the will, but it controls the intellect and the emotion. So a preacher preaches a sermon, he really lays it all out, this is the word of God, and the intellect hears it, hmm. That's really interesting. I'll put that in file number whatever. And so now the will has not changed because the intellect redirected it. You see? But sometimes when a person preaches, that's why you need Holy Spirit power when you preach. Sometimes when you preach, you actually get beyond the intellect and you get into the emotions and people go, oh, I need to do something about that. I ought, that sense of oughtness hits. I need to do something about this. And then you feel something and you weep over it and you have some emotional response. But the will will let you have that emotional response just so it doesn't have to change. You see it? So you felt something. That's wonderful. You know something and you felt something. That's good. You're two steps there. But the will has to change. It has to get, the preaching has to get all the way to the will. And buddy, in the power of your own intellect, or in your power to be able to move a crowd, you ain't gonna get there. It's gonna be a work of the Holy Spirit that gets that in there. He's gonna take your sermon. He's gonna take what you know, what you've trained here. He's gonna help you in your hermeneutics and your ability to do that. And then if the Holy Spirit will allow you, He will let you take that sermon and get it! into the very heart of a man. Preaching is wonderful. Sometimes when you are preaching, you see an audience open up their will. Just briefly, it doesn't happen all the time. Usually you just get to the intellect and a little bit to the emotions, but once in a while you see a will open up. And if you can slam it in right there at that time, that's when you see revival. That's when you see change happen in your church. It's not a matter of intellect, emotion, and will. I think sometimes what happens in a mission conference, I think we get to the intellect. We know about the need of the world. We hear about it. We get the emotions. Oh, we ought to do something about it. But then that will, that's where we lack. We need to bathe our mission conferences and times in prayer so that the Holy Spirit can work in our midst. And I'm serious when I say that. You see, it's not send the light, even though that's a good song. Send the light, the blessed gospel light. You know, I don't sing it much like that anymore. Sometimes I will, but I usually sing it, take the light. Because as long as we stay in this attitude of sending the light, we're just gonna wait to be impressed. And we can wait and wait and wait and the Holy Spirit will never move upon us because we're waiting instead of going in obedience. Number two, a second attitude that you have. Well, brother, we have to do this step-by-step, that philosophy that's out there. That's really where it comes where you say, my Jerusalem first, and then we'll see about reaching Judea and Samaria, and maybe we'll eventually get to the rest of the world. Do not doubt me, that philosophy out there in the churches. You have pastors that will say that, I'm reaching my Jerusalem. and we'll let God worry about the rest of it. They don't say it exactly that way, but they do. The idea is that there's a trickle-down effect here. That if we make our church really, really strong here, there'll be a trickle-down effect to the rest of the community, the rest of the world. I'll tell you a story here too, and then I'll move on. I know I'm preaching long, but didn't have testimony today. So that's... Na, na, na, na, na, na. Anyway, I was yesterday for you guys visiting. Never mind. So I'm a young missionary. I'm on deputation first time. I'm 24 years old. I'm ready to go, man. I'm going to go. And I went after one of the big churches. Big church. I won't name the church. Everyone in this room will know the church. But I went after the big one. You know, you're kidding. No, I did. I was stupid. But I had a friend that was on staff there. And I went to visit the big church. And I thought that I might possibly be able to get a meeting there. But boy, was I shot down. Not just shot down because they had so many missionaries. Shot down because they had no missionaries. No. No. And my staff member friend said, oh, we have a philosophy that we're going to reach our Jerusalem. And as we reach our Jerusalem, then the natural effect of that will be that there will be missionaries and there will be people that go and people that do. So they were not going to put their eggs into the missionary basket. They were going instead to build up a very large ministry in their location. And yes indeed, they did build a very large ministry in their part of the world. And I guess there probably was some trickle down effect. But don't you see, that really doesn't match with what the Lord Jesus Christ said in Acts chapter one in verse eight. It is both and and. It's not just your Jerusalem. It's the rest of the world too. Those of you who are gonna be pastors, do not forget this. Those of you who are gonna be evangelists, do not forget this. Do not kid in your mind that it's just for this one area where I am. You have a responsibility. I have a responsibility under the orders of our sovereign that it is to be to the uttermost parts of the earth. And then the third point I'll bring here by means of application, an attitude that we have. It's that we will do this as soon as we have everything ready to do it. You know we have a budget. You know we have to prepare. You know we have to supply. We have to do these things. And once we have that, then we'll do some more here in this area of trying to reach the outermost part of the earth. Now, I understand that you have to have a budget. I mean, Brother Cawthon's here right now and is wondering what I'm going to say, okay? But I understand that. But, you know, if you go back and read missionary history, anybody that is remembered in missionary history is somebody that just said, budget, boom, there it goes. Let's go preach. And God then provided the budget. Okay, that's the way it was done. Okay, talk about Hudson Taylor. Go ahead, talk about him. Did he have a budget? I don't think so. If he did, I don't know. It wasn't much of one if he did, but it was just like, let's go, let's go, let's go. That's the idea, let's go. General McClellan and the Civil War or the War of Northern Aggression. We'll just let you guys decide what it is. The War Between the States. How about that one? That's sort of neutral. Okay, but anyway, the Civil War, we'll leave it at that, okay? The Civil War, you had a northern general by the name of McClellan. He was the first one and he was good. He's West Point trained and he knew how to organize things. He was a very good organizer. And so he organized. And he kept on saying, I need more supplies. And they gave him more supplies. I need more men. And they gave him more men. I need to train them longer. And he trained them longer. And Abraham Lincoln was saying, OK. All right, if you know your history, you know this. Like, okay, what are you going to do with it? Well, I need some more. More what? More supplies, more training time, more men. It's a bigger thing I'm going up against here. I need more men, like that. And he kept on doing it. And somebody asked Lincoln, why isn't McClellan doing anything? And he tried to be political and say, oh, he's got the slows. And he really did. He really had the slows. And I mean, he just wasn't doing nothing. And finally, they forced his hand that he was supposed to go fight a battle. And even when he got into the battle, he kind of then backed out of it when he should have gone on ahead and finished off. And you know, just talking in military matters on that. And finally, you know, you know, Lincoln fired him. And then everybody was like, oh, you can't fire McClellan and all that kind of stuff. Well, yeah, he had to. He wasn't doing nothing. He was just sitting there preparing and preparing and preparing and supplying and training, but he didn't do anything. Okay? That's one thing to sit around and talk about. One of these days we're actually going to do something for missions. It's another thing to just go on ahead and say, let's do it. And sometimes you just gotta start doing it. Even if it's small, you just start. And then the Lord will honor it and go on with it. Then they called Grant, Grant to come. And maybe I shouldn't tell this, but people were complaining about Grant that a lot of times he would get drunk before he went to battle. And Lincoln said, I can't spare this man because he fights. And the person was complaining to him about it. He said, find out what he's drinking. I'm gonna send it to all my generals. Because he wanted them to fight, okay? And so Grant, and I know, like I said, that's not a, okay, I'm not, you know what I'm trying to say here, you know? You're not going to take away what he said, you know? Don't do that, okay? But what I'm saying is that, you know, eventually you've got to fight. You've got to do something with what you've got. So I'm gonna graduate from Bible college. Oh, I don't know what I'm gonna do. Why don't you just go do something, you know? Let's get busy and do something. As much as we can, as often as we can, as thoroughly as we can, let's go do it. Briefly, let me show you the uttermost, our uttermost. Let me show you that. Just let me show you a few things here, okay? from right here in Charlotte. You have to go by Charlotte, you can't go by Lattimore. I looked up some of this stuff. Farthest occupied place on the planet from us is Perth, Australia as far as a large city. So that's on the west coast of Australia. That's like To get there is going to take you a little bit, okay? You're going to be in the airplane a long time. Incidentally, we have Ben Childs and Lauren are about to ready to take their furlough and on their way back here to the States from Papua New Guinea. They're stopping by Perth because his father is a missionary in Perth, Australia. And then they'll be back through here. But that's pretty far away. The other place you can think of is Indonesia. Indonesia itself is about the same distance as it would be going to Perth, Australia. But out there in that part of the outermost parts of the world, there are all kinds of interesting places. There's this place called Palmerston Island. 62 people live on it. They're all descendants of one white captain that was shipwrecked there, I guess, with some native women. I don't know how it worked out exactly, but the 62 people all come from him. That was 150 years ago. A supply ship shows up there a couple times a year. That's the only way you can get in and the way you can get out. But they're there, and they need the gospel. There's this place called, I don't pronounce this well, Villa Las Estrellas. I think that's it. Ms. Hernandez can correct me on that later. In Chile, it is on King George Island and it's 75 miles from Antarctica. There are 200 permanent residents there. During the summer, there's more come because they supply those science places there in Antarctica. No mission work there. How about Antarctica? There's 10,000 people there that are permanent residents and 30,000 in the summer. Have you ever thought about being a missionary to Antarctica? It's possible. You work out of New Zealand six months out of the year and go over there six months out of the year. It's possible. There's this place up in Greenland, and praise God for Gage and Aaliyah going to Greenland, but it's, I can't even pronounce it, I-T-T-O-Q-U-O-R-T-O-O-R-M-I-I-T. Okay. 450 people unreached. Adak, Alaska. Way up there, 200 people, unreached. Oh, down in the Grand Canyon, down on the Havasupai Indian Reservation, all the way down there is the Supai village, unreached. Supai village, eight-mile trail to get in and out. No vehicles or anything. Yeah, they do use a helicopter every so often for stuff to get in and out of there. How about people groups like the Kazakhs? I'm telling you about the Uttomos. They're over in Asia. Tom Beck up at Mount Zion in Acme, he said, Pastor Johnston, tell him about this. So we had Dan Gill with Bearing Precious Seed line. Bearing Precious Seed and the Baptist Seed line up there, did I guess a project there at Acme. He was telling us about Sierra Leone. You know about Sierra Leone, we did the project last year. on Sierra Leone. Those John and Romans went to Sierra Leone. He said, this guy told him, this Dan Gill told him that there's only one missionary that's there in Sierra Leone. One. And he's 79 years old and he's looking for his replacement. That's the uttermost parts of the earth. Oh, let me tell you about this one. This one will really You want a challenge? This is a challenge. Oh boy, you wait. I'm kind of excited to tell you this one. Drum roll. Anyway, there's this place in Peru. It's called La Rinconada. La Rinconada. La Rinconada. I don't know how to say it. This is a city. This is a city of 50,000 people. Think one half the population of Cleveland County. Okay, it is three miles above sea level. It is like 15,000 up there. I mean, you know, up there, way up there in the Andes Mountains. You say, why in the world would there be a town up there? Gold. And it's a new town. They only discovered it back, eh, you know, 20 years ago, something like that. And all these people have moved in that are in there doing the gold mining. There are no laws. There is no police. There is no running water. There is no sewage system. The houses are not heated. And the average temperature year round is 34 degrees. You want to go there? They got any electric? Yeah, they got a little bit, but not enough for you to be able to run heaters. So just a little bit for some lighting, that kind of stuff. 50,000 people there. The men are miners. They all work in the mine. Sometimes they use child labor in the mines too. The women, what do they do? Prostitution. It is totally unreached, and I do say totally unreached, with massive numbers of children as well as this kind of a situation. Boy, that would be tough to go there. You better believe it. You better believe it. You'd have to acclimate yourself totally to 15,000 feet high and really just have to stay a while and go through some really hard stuff, but 50,000 people. Let's come back a little. Let's come back this way a little bit. Let's talk about our Samaria and our Judea, new immigrants. They're everywhere. America is a country of immigrants and there's new immigrants all over the place. The inner city. I preached before about the inner city. And I'm thankful that we have some of our grads are going to the inner city. We have six grads in New York City area that are starting churches and serving churches. Thankful for every one of them. But man, that is the Big Apple. We're talking about 9.7 million people up there. And then there's Atlanta, and there's Philadelphia, and there's Boston, and Charlotte. I mean, all of it. And we could talk long about that. Talk about the homeless. You want to talk about the sewer kids? The sewer kids. There are sewer kids, kids that live in the sewer, live on the street, and live down in the sewers. In the United States of America, there are. Want to talk about that? Oh, they're all around the world. You know, you can go to Romania, and there's thousands of them that live under the city streets in the sewers. They're homeless. Many of them are orphans. There are water pipes that run through the sewers that have some heated water in them, and so that's where they go to live, and they spend their entire existence there. They pop out, they go, and they pick up stuff from garbage places, and they go back down in. Who's gonna reach those people? They're souls that need to be reached with the Lord. They have them in Ulaanbaatar, I mean, in Mongolia. There's a lot of places where there's sewer kids. College students, and the deaf, and servicemen. Let's talk about truckers. I mean, you got interstates coming through there, there's truck stops. Your local church should be doing something for the truckers that come through there. There's 1.8 million people in the United States that drive truck. That's the low figure. The other figure is 3.4 million. Somewhere in between there. The reason why it's hard to figure it out is because a lot of the immigrants, the new immigrants, they don't have to speak much English if they're driving truck. So they're from all kinds of different nations and they're right there. You know, a Saturday ministry out at a truck stop, a Sunday morning early at a truck stop. We could do that. How about single moms, single parents? You know how hard it is to be a single mom in the United States of America? It's not easy. You don't have that support. A lot of times you're feeling guilty because of mistakes that you made. You feel abandoned because of marriage that didn't work or something like that. I mean it can be pretty bad. 13.7 million people in the United States in the single parent category. 28% of our children are single parent children. I mean their households are single parent. So what could we do for them? See, our nice suburban churches are mostly families, not all. I understand this. But there are a lot of families in our suburban areas like this. And we kind of cater to the families. Why don't we start catering a little more to the single moms? You know, one of the biggest burdens that single moms have is finding health, not healthcare, daycare. Daycare is expensive. If they get a job, so much of their salary will go with just daycare. And half the time, the people that are watching them, they don't really want them to watch them anyway, but they don't have anything else they can do. Why couldn't a church have a ministry, some of the grandmas in the church, to actually start having daycare free or minimal cost for some of the single moms? You know what? I bet you'd start reaching single moms hand over foot. I mean, I think you probably would. And you get those kids saved too. We're talking about our Samaria, our Judea, our Jerusalem here. I know what I'm saying here that this is not easy. It is not easy. But this is the uttermost. I'm describing for you just a few things of what the uttermost is. Have you seen it? Have you felt it? What are you gonna do about it? In Acts chapter 4 it talks about how that with great power the apostles gave witness and great grace fell upon them all. Great power and great grace. You know one reason why we don't have a lot of power? And we're not trying to do anything for the Lord. So we never tap into the great power that he has available for us. And so half the time we don't see the great grace that he could bestow upon us if we would just plug in to the great power that the Holy Spirit has. This I see, this I feel, this convicts me personally about what I'm doing for the Lord. I hope it convicts you as it has me. The uttermost, the challenge of the uttermost. What will you do with the uttermost? Dear Lord, I pray that you'll take it and use it as you see fit. I bring it to you, Lord. It's something that you laid on my heart and I bring it to you. I lay it before you. I ask you to do with it as you see fit. In Jesus' name.