I've chosen as my text this evening out of the book of Isaiah. One of the reasons I chose the book of Isaiah, I don't know if you're supposed to do this, but the reason I chose the book of Isaiah, one of the reasons is because it is one of my favorite books in all of scripture. I don't know how anyone who is a born-again Christian can read this book of God's holy word and not just be inspired and filled with a joy and a hope and an anticipation of God's glory and kingdom as it will come and manifest itself in the days in the future. how the Savior Jesus Christ is exalted in such a glorious way. It just... You know, you read those passages like Isaiah 55 that says, Ho everyone that thirsteth, and he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat. Why would you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which satisfies not? But hearken diligently to me, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. And as you've been reading about God's servant, that one who in chapter 53 would lay his life down for his people who would be broken under the wrath and curse of God. How can you not just have your heart gripped and moved and say, Lord, oh, how glorious is the gospel of Jesus Christ. I love the book of Isaiah. I chose it for another reason also. And the reason that I chose the book of Isaiah is because there have been, in the history of the church, as God's men and ministers have been thinking about the work of missions and evangelism, sermons that have been preached that God has used mightily. In the year 1792, there was a man by the name of David Bogue, a Scot, who had been invited to come down to London to speak to the Scottish Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. It was a group very similar to the English counterpart, the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, and also very close to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. He used as his text Isaiah chapter 11. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from the roots shall bear fruit. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of the knowledge of the Lord and the fear of God. And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eye sees, or decide disputes by what his ears hear. But with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. And he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins. The wolf shall lie down and dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fatted calf together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like an ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." And it was that sermon that Bob preached that began to inspire the heart of men such as Andrew Fuller, and a little bit later, William Carey, who some few years later, in 1798, as he was preaching to the Baptist Mission Society, took as his text Isaiah 54, beginning at verse 2. Enlarge the place of your tents and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out. Do not hold back. Lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left, and your offspring will possess the nations and will people the desolate cities. Fear not." Now, Carey took as the doctrine of that text this phrase, expect great things from God, attempt great things for God. Now, that wasn't entirely original to Kerry. In fact, he was echoing the sentiments of a missionary prior to his day by the name of John Eliot, a great Puritan missionary out of Massachusetts that went to the Algonquin Indians. And he said this, prayer and pains through faith in Jesus Christ will do anything. Prayer and pains. And God used those sermons. God used those men to begin to shape the church in our day in its mission endeavor. I want to talk about and look at Isaiah chapter 6 with us this evening. A few weeks ago, I was stuck down in Haiti. Is Matt Baugh here? Where's Matt? There he is, back there. See that tan guy back there? I was with Matt. I came back two weeks ago from Haiti looking like that. I got stuck down there for eight days. It wasn't a fruitless time. God was very blessed to us. But one of the things that happened is Matt and I would drive in and out of his house. There was a field there. Now, if you've never seen Haiti, Haiti basically is a rock island these days. They deforested the whole place. The rains came, washed all the topsoil into the sea. It's nothing but rocks. Barren. And there was this group of men, they were out there with these hoes, hoeing the ground, trying to take the rocks out of the ground so that they could plant watermelons. And day after day, as we would go in and out of the compound, I would see them out there hoeing. And the pile of rocks on this side was growing, but the rocks in the field were not diminishing in any form. In fact, it looked like to me, as we went in and out, that the rocks in the field were growing. There were more and more of them. The more they dug, the more rocks they found. And I watched those men for those days that I was there. Each day, as I'd come in and out, and I'd see the number begin to dwindle. One less. Two or three not working, sitting over here by the side, giving up, saying, I've had enough. We dig, we labor, we plow, and what fruit do we see from our work? And as I thought about that, and as I meditated upon it, and as I was preparing for this, I said, you know, that's a lot like evangelism and missions today. It's in a sorry state. You know, it seems that we go out, and we labor, and we work, and we do so much, we do so many things, and yet there is no fruit. The more rocks we take out of the field, it seems the more rocks there are in the midst of the field. And we get discouraged, and we begin to draw back, and we begin to turn away. And so, I was asked to speak upon the motive of the church. How do we motivate God's people to do that work that God has called them to do to propagate the gospel of Jesus Christ? Especially when they are in the midst of the labor and there are so many rocks and there are different kinds. There are the rocks of disbelief. You see, they go out in the field and there are those rocks of disbelief. They disbelieve in the supernatural. Can God really do something with this field? Even when I get all these rocks pulled out of here, is it ever going to bear the melons that I desire? Is it going to bring forth fruit? Is it ever going to be able to provide for the needs of my family? Is it ever going to be able to provide so that I can live a better life than what I'm living now? And many, as they go out to evangelize, as they go out to do missions, they look and they say, is God able? There's a disbelief in the supernatural. Is God able to really change the world? And you see that comes from a fundamental disbelief in the power of God. We wonder, is God strong enough? Can he do it? Can he cause the unrighteous to become righteous? in Christ? Can He take the naked Karamazhan and bring him to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ? Can He change his heart? We heard so eloquently this morning about that work of God's Spirit in regeneration and the power of God that changes men. But many of us doubt. We disbelieve. We've prayed for our loved ones for years and years and years and years and we've seen no change. We've seen no turning around. And we begin to disbelieve the power of God. We disbelieve the gospel. Is the gospel really what the world needs? Listen, we live in the 21st century. No sane person would go out and say to the world, what the world needs is the gospel. We hear it all the time. What the world needs is more equitable distribution of its wealth and goods. What the world needs is better governments. What the world needs is better education. What the world needs is better medicine. And I say, listen, you can be well and go to hell. You can be rich and go to hell. You can have the best governments in the world and go to hell. It is only the gospel that brings us into saving union with God through Jesus Christ. And we must believe. And yet there are those rocks as we go out every day working, working, working. Lord, we've prayed, we've worked, we've labored, but the rocks are still here. And then there's those rocks of opposition. They oppose. You see, it is so discouraging to go out with the good news to a people that don't appreciate what you're trying to do for them. You start preaching the gospel to them and it's like they look at you and say, oh, what do you really want? You're just here trying to get my money? You're just here trying to take over my country? You just want our oil? You just want our goods? You just want this? You just want that? And they oppose us. Well, we oughtn't to be surprised. I mean, after all, the gospel is scandalous to the unbeliever. We come to him and we say, listen, your knowledge is worthless. All of your achievements are vain. Everything that you've done has absolutely no value to make you right with God. That's a hard thing for them to swallow, and they oppose us. It's scandalous to them religiously. We go to them and we say, all of your gods are idols. They certainly don't view them as idols. They don't look on them as being false gods. We've come to them and we said, your gods are false. They're not real. They will only lead you to perdition. They have eyes, but they cannot see. They have ears, but they cannot hear. We insult them, in a sense, and they oppose us. We attack them socially. Jesus said in Matthew's Gospel, Chapter 10, think not that I have come to bring priests to the world, but I've come to bring a sword to separate families. Mothers from daughters, fathers from sons, sons from their mother-in-laws. The Gospel brings division. We go into a Muslim country, we begin to preach, we take that individual out of that family. And they oppose us. They fight against us. They don't want to hear. And we say, Lord, every time we go out, as we minister in your name, there are these rocks of opposition. Or what about the rocks of our own security and ease? You see, the gospel demands a lifestyle. If we are going to be a mission church, if we are going to be an evangelizing church, we must have an evangelistic lifestyle. We must have a mission lifestyle. God doesn't just take the spare from us. He demands the heart, the fullness. It's kind of like we give God the whole pocketbook and He gives us a little bit of change back. And that's hard. Those are those rocks of security and ease. It's easy for me to live in my house, to be here in Greenville, South Carolina, to live in this place where I live. And if I go to the mission field, I got to live where there's no electricity and no running water, where there's threats to my life, where there's disease like malaria and typhoid and all those kinds of things. And it's easy to live here. I like my creaturely comforts. I like the ease. I don't want to have to go traipsing out in a village someplace to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. But also not only our ease, but isn't it true it is the stones of our own slothfulness that hinders us? David Bogue in that 1792 sermon on Isaiah 11 writes this, We call ourselves the disciples of Christ, but it is owing to the coldness of the zeal of Christians for the glory of God and the salvation of their fellow creatures that in so great a part of the world the darkness of paganism envelops the people. Had we employed our most active endeavors for the conversion of the heathen, and had God frowned on the attempt in every place, we might have sat down with some degree of quietness of mind. But this is far from being the case. We have been slothful. I wish we may not also be found wicked servants. To our coldness and the want of zeal, it is owing that millions of our fellow creatures are still sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death. And shall we sit unconcerned under such a charge? God forbid. We pray daily for the conversion of the heathen and for the glory of God in the latter days. So far, we do well. But if there be a plan proposed by which we may be instrumental in conveying the gospel to them, our prayers, if unaccompanied with exertion to carry the plan into execution, are nothing better than hypocrisy. Our slothfulness, those stones that stand in the way, that discourage us, that turn us away. So what do we do? How are we to motivate God's people? Do we do it by making them feel guilty? As one book title said, we live in the age of guilt manipulators. Do we go into congregations and try to wring the consciences of God's people, making them feel guilty about how much they have and how comfortable they live and all the things that are there and try to get them to go out? Do we do it by coming to them and enticing them with great stories? Listen, I'm a storyteller. I can tell some great stories. And I've seen the dog and pony shows that go out to congregation and tells all the great adventure stories about the mission field, hoping to entice someone to say, hey, I want to go out and have an adventure like that. I'd like to do that. That sounds like a lot of fun, seeing king cobras running around and elephants and all those kinds of things. That would be a lot of fun. Or do we go and just continue to beg and to plead? Oh, come on, guys. Come on out there and bear some of the burden with us. We've been out here for a long time. We could use some help. And do that over and over and over again, like that woman who's constantly pulling on the hem of the garment for the king, till he finally gets so fed up, he goes and says, here, take what you need. Is it that we are to go? Is that how God would motivate us in the Church of Jesus Christ? No, I don't think so. We want to look at Isaiah 6 here to see how God motivated Isaiah. I love, again, this passage. As we read down in Isaiah chapter 6, verse 9, Verse 8, it says, And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said, Here am I, send me. And he said, Go. Now, we've just seen this scene. And you know, what I picture when I read this is like being in a kindergarten class and the teacher in the front of the room asks a question. And every little boy and every little girl's got their hand up and going, here I am. Pick me. Pick me. I'm right here. I'm right here. If she doesn't pick me, I can't get the answer. Pick me. Here I am. Send me. Send me. I'll be the hall monitor. I'll collect the lunch money. I'll open the door. I'll do whatever. Here I am. And here's Isaiah. Isaiah, who has just gone through an experience that would probably undo every single one of us crying out to the Lord, here Lord, here I am, send me. Now as we look at Isaiah 6, let's put a little bit in perspective. I believe there are three sections in the book of Isaiah. I do not believe there's three authors to the book of Isaiah. Isaiah the prophet is the only one under the inspiration of God who wrote for us this book. But I do believe there are three sections to the book of Isaiah. It can easily be divided between chapters 1 and 12 as the first section, chapters 13 through 39 as the second section, and chapters 40 through 66 as the third section. First section deals with Israel, Jerusalem, and Judea and their sin. The second section deals with the sin of the nations and God's judgment upon them. The third section comes back to Israel and also to the nations to deal with and to talk about the great salvation of God. Now, most of us are the most familiar with the third section. beginning at Isaiah chapter 40 and going to verse chapter 66 and we see such a beautiful layout in that section as the Lord builds as it were to a crescendo to a place where he exalts the Savior. You have basically 13 chapters leading up to Isaiah 53, and you have 13 chapters after Isaiah 53, and the pinnacle, the place, the focal point is that glorious chapter. Chapter 53, the work of God in the salvation of men. Well, I think there's a parallel to that even in the first section. There are 12 chapters in the first section. You have the beginning of that book where Isaiah begins to deal in chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 with the horrible sin of Israel and Judah. and the judgment, His righteous judgment that is going to come upon them. And then suddenly in chapter 6 we have this glorious view of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Where God calls Isaiah to begin to proclaim His message to His people. And then we go through the other chapters. We have chapter 7 where we are told about the virgin who shall conceive, and then chapter 8, chapter 9 we're given about the child who is given unto us, who will be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God. Chapter 11 that I read to us, we're told about this one who is a stem out of the stump of Jesse. And that the government will be upon him and he will bring lasting and everlasting peace. And then we have that glorious chapter 12. And you can't talk about chapter 12 without reading it. You will say in that day, I will give thanks to You, O Lord, for though You were angry with me, Your anger turned away, that You might comfort me. Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and will not be afraid. For the Lord God is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation. With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation and you will say in that day, give thanks to the Lord, call upon His name, make known His deeds among the people, proclaim that His name is exalted, sing praises to the Lord for He has done gloriously. Let this be made known in all the earth. Shout and sing for joy, O inhabitants of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. That was the message that we'll see in just a moment. How does God motivate Isaiah? Well, as we look at these first verses, we see, first of all, that God gave Isaiah a vision of the glory of His person. God gave Isaiah a vision of the glory of His person. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above Him stood the seraphim, each had six wings, and with two He covered His face, and with two He covered His feet, and with two He flew. And one called to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is filled with His glory. The whole earth is filled with the glory. You see, God came and He opened the eyes of Isaiah to see the Lord of hosts, the Lord of the covenant, the Lord of glory, high and lifted up so that His train fills the temple. And He heard the seraphim as they cried, holy, holy, holy. Now some would argue that He is crying the triple holies there because of the triune nature of God. But I don't think that that's all that is going on. Isaiah is seeing and hearing the angels cry, holy, holy, holy, because they are expressing the fullness, the glory, the grandeur nature of God. They are looking and they are singing because all of God's glory fills the totality of the universe because He is the creator and maker of all things. Because He is the sustainer of all things. Because He holds all things in the palm of His hand. You see, this is not some territorial deity that Isaiah is looking at. This is not some vain idol that he has conjured up in his own mind. But this is the Lord of hosts, the King of kings, the God who has entered into covenant with men, and He is showing Himself to Isaiah. Remember those episodes throughout Scripture where God reveals Himself to those whom He's called. We think about God's revealing Himself to Moses. and how God hides him in the cleft of the rock, and He reveals His glory, His high glory to Moses, and Moses' face shined with the glory of God. And how God revealed himself to Ezekiel, the prophet. And how God, through Christ later, would reveal himself to John in the revelation. These glorious revelations. He reveals the glory of his person. He causes Isaiah to stand back in awe and to fall upon his face. Isaiah saw God's glory filling the temple, knowing that it is God who has made heaven and earth, and it is God who has power to redeem, and it's God who has power to take. You see, the Bible says that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, because our God is a consuming fire. And here Isaiah was beholding the glory of the person of God in a vision. He saw the Lord high and lifted up and his train filled the temple. And what effect does it have upon him when he sees This it says, Woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. It humbled him in the dust. It broke him. He knew that he had seen God. He knew that it was the Lord whom he had seen and stood before. And it humbled him because as he has been telling us about the circumstance and the situation that exists in his day, the sinfulness, the wickedness, the wretchedness, and here God in his glory shows himself to Isaiah, bows him down, prostrates him upon the ground as he revealed the glory of this person. But God doesn't leave Isaiah there. God doesn't leave Isaiah laying upon his face because the scripture then tells us that God gave Isaiah a taste of the glory of his work. Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and he said, behold, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for. You see, God revealed not only the glory of His person, but He also revealed the glory of His power. He took Isaiah, this sinful man, this creature who was bowed down before Him, and He touched him with the power of His own grace and glory, and lifted him up. So that as Isaiah would later be sent with the message of God, he would know the truth and the reality of that message because he had been humbled by the sight of God and he had now been raised up by the work of God. God had changed his life. God had made him a new creature. God had made him something that he wasn't before. He was a new man. God had touched his lips. Now this man who was a man of unclean lips to dwelt in the midst of a people of unclean lips would become the spokesperson for God. He would speak God's Word because God had changed him. God had renewed him. God had regenerated him. God had taken his sin away. God revealed to Isaiah. a vision of the glory of his person. God gave Isaiah a taste of the glory of his work. This man of unclean lips was now made new. But thirdly, the text says God also gave Isaiah a passion for the glory of his message. Read those first chapters of the book of Isaiah. They are some of the most colorful chapters and all of Scripture. I love it in chapter 2 when the day of the Lord is coming, for the people have rejected the Lord, and God's coming as a sweeping fire. He's burning the earth! Now, some years ago, when I was in my DMIN program at Westminster Seminary in California, I was asked to teach in the evangelism class. In fact, I taught some in Dr. Piper's evangelism class while he was there. And I had to get up real early in the morning. The class started like at 8 o'clock in the morning. I lived about three hours away from Escondido at that time. And there had been a lot of fires in California. And there was one that was burning pretty close to the area that I lived, the area of Irvine. And I got up about five o'clock in the morning and it was still dark outside and got in my car and came out of my neighborhood. And as I came onto the freeway, it's a big freeway, the 405 freeway that heads south to hit the main freeway that takes you into Southern California. The hills that surround there, it's called Saddleback Valley. The hills that are surrounding there were completely lined with this wall of red flame for as far as you could see in either direction. Just this massive wall of flame. And down below on the freeway, where I was getting on the freeway, there was a mass of all of the fire engines and all of the firemen and the police cars and they were all there waiting for this army to march down this hill as it was coming towards the neighborhood in which I lived and towards UC Irvine. That's just this army. Well, later in the day, now, you know, this was, it wasn't green in Southern California by any means. It's brown rolling hills. But that afternoon when I came back from Escondido on my way back home, it was flat, black, nothing. There wasn't a stick, a stubble, nothing sticking up. It was completely level, decimated, wiped out. Nothing left. And that's the vision that Isaiah gives here in these first chapters of the book of Isaiah. God's consuming fire, it's burning, and the people are running. They are running as fast as their legs will carry them. In fact, it says to us in chapter 2 that they will enter into the rocks, and they will hide in the dust, and before the terror of the Lord, and from the splendor of His majesty, they will try to flee away. They're looking for every place they can hide. They're looking for every nook and cranny that they can jump into to get themselves out of the path of the fury of God's wrath. In fact, he goes on to say, again, very picturesquely as he does, and the people shall enter the cage of the rocks, verse 19, and the holes of the ground from before the terror of the Lord and from the splendor of his majesty when he rises to terrify the earth. In that day, mankind will cast away their idols of silver and their idols of gold, which they make for themselves to worship. They'll cast them away to the molds and to the bats to enter the caverns of the rocks and the cliffs of the cliffs. They're going to take their idols and they're going to give them to the molds and the bats and say, here, let us in. Let us hide. Take them. They're no good to us. They can't stop the fire. They can't help us in any way. But in the midst of that, God has these great precipices that stick up, that remind me of going into the Yosemite Valley and seeing Half Dome, that great granite mountain standing up. Chapter 2, he talks about the mountain of the Lord, and how out of that mountain shall proceed the law. So while they're running as fast as they can, there's the mountain of safety that they can run and hide in. And then he comes along in chapter 4, and he says to us in verse 2, In that day the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land shall be the pride and the honor of the survivors of Israel. You see, they're running along, but there's a branch. There's a plant that's protected, as it were. A branch that all of the survivors of Israel can run and hide in. He goes on then to tell us in chapter 7 that it is Emmanuel, God with us, that it's the child who was born, whose name is Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. It is after the storm of God's furious past. It is the shoot out of the stump of Jesse. You see, Isaiah saw and had a zeal for the glory of the message of God. Who is like our God? Who can save as our God saves? Notice how Isaiah says it later in a couple of passages. Isaiah chapter 45, actually chapter 44. beginning at verse 6. Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, I am the first and I am the last. Beside me there is no God. Who is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and set it before me, since I appointed an ancient people. Let them declare what is to come and what will happen. Fear not, nor be afraid. Have I not told you from of old and declared it? And you are my witnesses. Is there a God beside me? There is no rock. I know not one." Or as he says in Isaiah 45, Verse 21, the last part. Was it not I, the Lord, and there is no other God beside me, a righteous God and a Savior? There is none beside me. You see, Isaiah understood the message of God. God's wrath and fury would come and it would burn across the face of the ground, but God would save His people. Because He's God. Because of who He is. And He has seen him. And He has seen His glory. And He has seen the glory of His work as He Himself had been lifted up. And He has seen the glory of His message. That all who would call upon the name of the Lord would be saved. He says it over and over again. Come now and let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they be like crimson, they shall be like wool. Hearken! Listen! Come! There is no God like unto our God. All the gods of this world are nothing but vanity of vanities. They have eyes, but they cannot see. They have ears, but they cannot hear. And what was Isaiah's response to all of this? The Lord says, whom shall we send? Here I am, Lord, send me. Let me proclaim this word. Let me go out in the name of the living and true God. Let me announce the message to the nations. And oh, how we as pastors would love to see our congregations on a Sunday morning saying, send me, send me, I'll go. I'm ready, where do I sign? What line do I place my name on? What do I have to do? Please, send me. Let me tell of the glory of God and the work of salvation and proclaim this good message that our God reigns. Send me, Lord, let me go. That's how God motivated Isaiah. And that's how you pastors will motivate your congregations. What do you need to do to motivate the congregations? Do you need to make them feel guilty? No. Do you need to tell them great stories? No. Do you need to beg and plead with them? No. What you must do, you must show them the glory of God's Christ. You must show them the glory of God's Christ. We hear a lot today about preaching Christ. And one of the problems that we have is that we don't show the people the glory of Christ. When our people come to churches on Sunday morning in our worship, do they see Christ standing in our midst? The Bible is clear and plain. Where two or three are gathered together in His name, there He is in the midst of them. Christ leads us in our worship. Christ administers to us our sacraments. It is Christ who preaches to us His Word. through the means that He's appointed. But it is Christ. Do our people see Christ? Do they see the glory of Christ? Do they walk out of the church saying, I was in the presence of Jesus? We want our people to carry the good news to the world. They must see Christ. They must know that they stood in the presence of the thrice holy God. They must hear by faith the angels cry, Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God Almighty, heaven and earth is filled with your glory. They must see Christ. And God has called you to show it to them. God has called you to exalt the Savior in their midst. So when they go out that door, they say, He was here. He was here. He was really here. And you must show them the glory of God's work. The Bible tells us in John's gospel that the Word became flesh and dwelled among us and we beheld His glory. the glory of the only begotten Son, full of grace and truth. You see, we must put Christ before them, and they must see the glory of His work. He is full of glory, full of grace, full of truth. There is in Christ a fullness. And we must put it before the people. There is in Him a fullness of ability to save unto the uttermost all them that come unto Him, And all that come unto Him, He will in no wise cast out. As they run to this city of refuge, as they run to this citadel of hope, it is not one that will turn them away and say, flee, go somewhere else. No, He will receive them because He is able to save unto the uttermost all them that come unto Him. For His name is the only name given under heaven, whereby men might be saved. There is in Him a fullness of wisdom. There is no greater way of salvation than the way that God has appointed. To the world it is foolish, but unto us which are saved it is the wisdom of God. God is wise. Look around you. Look around you. Take a look at your neighbor sitting next to you. Think about all the backgrounds that we come from and all the places that God has, by His grace and in His sovereign mercy, brought us. I was a dope addict in Southern California, and God picked me up and saved my soul and brought me to Himself. And others were caught up in their money and their lifestyles, and others were caught up in their education and their philosophies, and others were caught up in their jobs, and God moved. And in this congregation tonight we have people from Brazil, We have people from Haiti. We have people from Africa. We have people from New Zealand. We have people from all over the world that God has come and done his work regenerating us and bringing us from the north and the south and the east and the west so that we would flow together as his people. Look around. This is the glory of God's work. Do you perceive and do you see? Do you understand what God has done? God takes wretched, miserable sinners lost in their trespasses, dead, and He raises us up and He brings us together. And you must show them the glory of God's work. You see, preachers are afraid to preach about sin because they've never really seen Christ. We don't want to paint the people too evil because we don't have a Jesus that can save them. Well, my friend, you are wretched, miserable, poor, sinners, dead. But I have a God who can save you. I have a God who can change you and make you a new creature in Christ. I have a God who will bring you to the well of salvation that you will drink from, and you will never thirst again, and He will bring you to the bread of life, and you will eat, and you will never hunger again. I have such a God! And it's not just simply me, some white Anglo-Saxon American, but it is for all people, black, white, yellow, green. It makes no difference. God is a God who saves. and you must show them the glory of God's message. God's word never returns to him void, but it accomplishes all that he sends it to do. The gates of hell will not prevail against it. The iron curtains, the bamboo curtains, the governments of communism, the governments of Islam, the governments of Buddhists, it makes no difference. God will conquer. His name will cover the earth even as the waters cover the sea. And there is nothing nor no one who will thwart Him or turn Him away. God's word is as a battering ram bashing down the gates of hell. And Isaiah saw it. And he knew it. And he cried out, oh God, send me! Please! Send me! I'll go! We want our churches to evangelize brethren. We want them to do missions. We must show them the glory of God's person. We must show them the glory of God's work. We must show them the glory of God's message. And you pastors that are here today, this is on your shoulders. God has called you to do it. He didn't call the angel to do it like He did with Isaiah. He called you to tell His people. Each and every one of us will stand before the Lord and give an account for the message we carried and the word we brought. We complain in our churches. There's not enough men. There's not enough men to send. Well, maybe it's because the church has been so stingy. They won't come up with the necessary things to send them. Nobody wants to go through seminary for three or four years to basically have the church say to them, sorry, we can't afford to send you anywhere. We keep praying to God. God brings up men. And yet there is such a smallness of men. Maybe it's because we won't go and do what God wants us to do. On the other hand, let me address myself to some of you students here today. You might be complaining, well, you know, I'm going to get out of seminary and I'm, you know, there's no place for me to go. There's nothing for me to do. Well, maybe it's because you're not willing to go where God has called you to go. We want to go out to the nice places, the easy places, the places that my faith doesn't get taxed so much. The place where, you know, I can be fairly comfortable. The church isn't going to give for you to just go out and sit and do nothing. Listen to a missionary in one of his speeches by the name of Alexander Duff. Alexander Duff was, now I'm not going to steal the thunder from the preacher tomorrow who's going to be talking to us about Thomas Chalmers, but Alexander Duff was one of those group of men that was known as the Saint Andrew Seven. And he was probably one of the best and godliest missionaries that the Lord had sent out. In fact, it's very interesting. In the day at this time when all this was going on, let me get the statistics here. When Thomas Chalmers in 1810 got converted, he'd been in the ministry for a while, he gets converted, he gets a missionary spirit, he starts talking about it. About 1810 is when that took place. Alexander Duff was born in 1806. William Chalmer Burns was born in 1813. David Livingston was born in 1815, and John G. Payton was born in 1824. Alexander Duff went to India, probably next to William Carey, the greatest missionary that we have ever sent there. William Chalmer Burns went to China, and God blessed his ministry. David Livingston went to Africa, and we know what the Lord did with him. And John G. Payton went to the New Hebrides, and God blessed. At the same time God was working in the life of Thomas Chalmers to bring him to a missionary understanding of things, God was raising up young men who would come under his influence and sway, who would go out Alexander Duff was sent out by the Church of Scotland in 1829. He'd come back in 1835 and had given a very moving address to the congregation at the General Assembly about God's work and missions. And then in 1866, when he was 60 years old, he had left India. And this is what Ian Murray writes. Probably the most moving of all of Duff's later speeches came in the assembly of 1866, when at the age of 60, he had seen India for the last time. In a long, impassioned address, he laid down the principles that God must only be served with our best, and that the finest ministers were needed at once in India. Yet since his return, not one ministerial candidate had applied to him for work abroad. He said, if then no young men are to be found, he told the odd assembly, he must himself go back tomorrow to die on the banks of the Ganges. If this is to be formally acknowledged, that we can no longer get men to go forth to the work, we must be satisfied to get men to go forth as witnesses or martyrs, ready to die, and in dying, to bear the testimony of the grandeur of the missionary enterprise. Already moved by the sensation caused by these words, the assembly had to watch as Duff, prostrated with exhaustion from the supreme effort, left the platform. But his message was not finished. After a pause, the aging missionary resumed again, and with almost overwhelming earnestness, he called upon his church to greater faith and sacrifice. He said, the voice of the past history, of the glorified in heaven, of the reformers, and of those who gave Scotland her creed and confession, the voice of the preaching of the perishing on earth and the tormented in hell, all summoned them to realize the great doctrine of Christ's headship and kingship over all the earth. And so Duff, who had first attended a General Assembly 37 years before, concluded a speech which runs to nearly 30 close printed pages. Let us press forward, resolved that we shall not desist or pause in our onward cause and career of victory till Christ's crown be triumphantly planted on the last citadel of the hitherto unconquered realms of heathenism." And then they came, and they assisted him out of the hall in a state of extreme exhaustion. Who will go? Who will go? We have missionaries in Haiti working alone. We have missionaries in Africa working alone. We have men crying all over the world, send us someone to work with us. Who will go? Do I have to leave and go back? I will. Will you come with me? Will you come and proclaim the glory of our great God to the nations, because He and He alone, and it is His name and His alone, whereby men might be saved? Or maybe the problem is we haven't seen the glory of this person. Maybe the problem is we don't know the glory of His work. Let me close with this prayer found in the diary of David Livingston in 1852. Oh Jesus, fill me with thy love now, and I beseech thee, accept me and use me a little for thy glory. I have done nothing for thee yet, and I would like to do something. I will place no value on anything I have or may possess except in relation to the kingdom of Christ. If anything will advance the interests of that kingdom, it shall be given away or kept. Only as by giving or keeping of it, I shall most promote the glory of him to whom I owe all my hopes in time and in eternity." May God be pleased to bless the preaching of his word. Let's pray. Our Father and our God, we do praise and honor and magnify your name. Great art thou, O Lord, and worthy are you of our praise. O God, send out missionaries, send out men, send out families, send out teams, send them to the four corners of the earth. May the name of Jesus be exalted. O God, cause us to long and so desire the glory of your name that we would give anything and everything. Use us, O Lord. Use us to thy glory. You have not used us yet. Use us, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.