Christ’s Sovereign Declaration: This Gospel Will Be Preached (Matthew Sermon 121)

Introduction

It still amazes me as I think about it, just the significance of the moment in redemptive history as this young rabbi sits on the rocky hillside overlooking Jerusalem surrounded by just a small handful of ordinary men, and makes an extraordinary prediction concerning human history. This one verse that we’re looking at today, Matthew 24:14, “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”

That prediction that Christ made on that hillside would be one of the costliest predictions that Jesus ever made. It would cost the lives of thousands and thousands of his choice followers over two millennia in the years to come. It would bring pain and disease and injuries, and tears and torture and blood and tragic funerals, and incalculable sorrow to those who would see that it happened.

The preaching of the gospel in every nation has been incalculably expensive. And examples are bound from church history, and we ought to immerse ourselves in them for our own edification, lest we think too highly of ourselves and our own achievements. Immerse yourself in church history. These are your brothers and sisters, you’re part of a royal family.

October 8, 1732, a sailing vessel pulled away from the wharf in Copenhagen, Denmark. On board were John Leonard Dobber, a potter, and David Nitschmann, a carpenter, who were leaving the security of their jobs and their families in Copenhagen to become the first Moravian missionaries. In a prayer meeting, they had both felt the strong call of the spirit to come and minister the gospel to the slaves of sugar plantations at St. Thomas, in the West Indies. They knew the only way to reach them would be to enslave themselves, to become slaves themselves, to reach these lost people. One of the men left a wife and children begging him on the wharf not to go – reconsider and stay. But the call and the heart of God for these slaves in the West Indies was even greater than that pull, the pull of home. And as the ship pulled away from the docks, these men lifted the cry and those waiting on the wharf heard it: “May the lamb that was slain receive the reward of his suffering.” Amen to that. May Jesus get what he deserves for dying on the cross. And that became the resonating heartbeat of the Moravian missions movement, and the cost they paid was very high.

So also the cost of Adoniram Judson who buried two different wives and six children in five different locations for the cause of the gospel, whose sorrow over the shocking loss, sudden loss of his wife Ann was so profound that he dug his own grave and stared into it for weeks in deep despondency waiting for God to kill him, but pulled out of it and led hundreds, even thousands of Burmese to faith in Christ. He laid his life on the line to fulfill that aspect of Jesus’ prediction that we’re looking at today; this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in Burma as a testimony of that nation, then the end will come.

That spirit, that drive to fulfill the Great Commission was in the volunteers of the student volunteer movement, the early part of the 19th century. You’ve heard of them, they’re the ones that pack their belongings in their own coffins because tropical illness made the life expectancy somewhere between 18 months and two years. So why waste extra baggage with boxes? They just packed their stuff in their own coffins and they died for the gospel from fevers.

That same spirit motivated William Borden, who was a 1909 graduate of Yale University, heir to the Borden family fortune, was converted to Christianity, gave his life to become a missionary to the Muslims in China. He never made it. He died of spinal meningitis during his training in Egypt. His grieving parents were given his Bible, in it they found in one place the words, “No reserve.” Nothing held back. And next to those words “No reserve” was a date placed shortly after he had renounced his family fortune in favor of missions. And at a later point, he had written the words “No retreat.” That was dated shortly after he was diagnosed with meningitis, and just before he died, “No regrets.” What a spirit! I want that spirit in me, I want that spirit in this church. No reserve, no retreats, no regrets, everything for the gospel. That’s the kind of commitment it takes to fulfill Jesus’ prediction.

Now, how is it that Jesus sitting on that rocky mountainside overlooking Jerusalem could predict that 20 centuries of his followers would be willing to make these kinds of sacrifices to get it done? That’s the focus of the sermon today. Basically, in a nutshell, what I’m gonna say is only the sovereign power of the Holy Spirit over the hearts of the followers of Jesus to lay down their lives for people that have never met would make these words come true. And that kind of sovereign power is at work still today. I’d like to see it at work in this church, as it has been, and I wanna see it continue to work here, that we might help fulfill Jesus’ prediction. That’s what this sermon is about.

The context of Matthew 24:14: Jesus had made a prediction, a shocking prediction of the destruction of the temple. Not one stone left on another, every one would be thrown down. The disciples come to Jesus privately on the Mount of Olives, they ask him about it. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen? And what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” And so Jesus begins teaching them about the end of the world, about the destruction of Jerusalem and other things, Matthew 24, the rest of the chapter, and then on into 25, really, it’s all of a unit. Speaking about the end of the world and the second coming of Christ and the way that we are to prepare for it.

Last week, we looked at the first section. In my opinion, Matthew 24:4-14 describes the events on earth between the first and second comings of Christ. What will life be like between those two events, the first coming of Christ and the second coming of Christ? He begins in verse 4 and 5 with a warning against false Christs, false prophets, false teaching. Verses 6-8, he talks about what he calls the beginning of birth pangs: wars, rumors of wars, famines and earthquakes in various places. These kinds of things. General convulsions of a sin-sick planet, that it would be a difficult place to live.

And then in verses 9-13, I think he’s talking about the specific sufferings of the people of God, what kinds of trials and temptations and sufferings are gonna come on his followers themselves. They’ll be hated by all people on account of him. They’re gonna be arrested, they’re gonna be persecuted, they’re gonna be put to death. Some are gonna betray and turn away from the faith and betray their own brothers and sisters in Christ. And there is a need in verse 13 to stand firm to the end. Only those people who stand firm to the end will be saved.

And then he gives this one verse, “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” And this is, in its context, a sign of the coming of Jesus Christ, the steady irresistible advance of the gospel of Jesus Christ is evidence and proof of the same day coming back of Christ. The fact that we can see the progress that’s happening right in front of us. And friends, it’s accelerating. In our own lifetimes it’s going faster and faster, it’s exciting, what a thrilling time to be alive, but it’s evidence of signs of Jesus’ return. The advance of the gospel.

I. Not a Command But a Prophecy

Christ’s Saving Purpose

Now, as we come to verse 14, one of the central points I wanna make is that this is not a command but a prophecy. There’s no word of command here. Now, Jesus came into the world, we were told, to seek and to save the lost. Very plain. He came into the world as a rescue mission, that we were lost, we had no hope. Luke 19:10, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” Came to save us from our sins. That’s why he came the first time. It’s why he shed his blood on the cross, that’s why he died.

It’s also why he’s waiting to return, he’s waiting for the second coming so that individuals may be saved, so that people can repent and come to faith in Christ. That’s why he’s waiting. 2 Peter 3 teaches us this in verse 9, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

And then in that same chapter, in verse 15, “Bear in mind,” said Peter, “that our Lord’s patience means salvation.” There are specific elect people, they were chosen before the foundation of the world, the Bible teaches us, and the gospel has to reach them. Paul says he’ll endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may hear the gospel and be saved. That’s why the Lord’s waiting. It’s not for no purpose. It’s to get this work done. The gospel work.

Many Commands for Evangelism

Now, I said this, this is not a command in verse 14, I’ll say more about that in a moment, but there are many commands concerning the Great Commission. All you have to do is go to the end of this gospel, the most famous of all of the commissioning statements. “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.” Verse 18 and following, “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I’ve commanded you, and surely I’m with you always to the very end of the age.”

There’s the command. Commands are not lacking, we’re commanded to go, commanded to make disciples, we’re commanded to baptize them, we’re commanded to teach them to obey everything. And this command was going to be across all the eras of church history. “Surely, I am with you always to the very end of the age.” It’s a lasting, abiding command on the church and on you individually, and me too.

So there’s the command also in Mark 16:15-16, “He said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved but whoever does not believe will be condemned.’” So there’s the command. We have it in Matthew 28, we have it in Mark 16.

At the end of the book of Romans, Paul speaks specifically of the command to take the gospel. He speaks of “the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him.” There’s the word command even. There’s no doubt about it, we are commanded to do this. And if we love Jesus we’ll obey him.

The Lesson of the Commands: We Have an Obligation

And the lesson of the command then is that we have an obligation to the lost. Paul speaks of this obligation, the sense of being a debtor, we owe something. In Romans 1:14-16 he says, “I’m obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish.” I owe them a debt. “That is why I’m so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome. I’m not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” So Paul says, “I owe Greeks and I owe non-Greeks, I owe everybody the gospel.”

And so this is not in any way paying Jesus back for what he did in saving him. We’re not saved on a mortgage payment plan, friends. And you pay it off in installments with good works, that is faulty thinking, that’s not the debt. Paul owes other human beings the gospel, and he’s going to discharge it by preaching, that’s the lesson of the commands. We should not feel any less an obligation.

In 1792, William Carey, the father, so-called, of the modern Protestant missions movement wrote a tract entitled this, “An Inquiry into The Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens.” Carey was there arguing against the passive view of the sovereignty of God, that because God is sovereign and he can do everything without human agency, that we don’t need to do anything. And if God wants to convert the heathen, he can do it on his own time and in his own way. He’s writing against that view, though he himself believed in the absolute sovereignty of God, he still said, “We need to use means.” We ought to do stuff, that’s the 21st century version of “Use means.”

We have to do stuff to get the heathen, the lost people converted, we have to get – in Carey’s day – we have to get on ships and sail to India and set up a mission station and study the Hindu languages, and we have to preach the gospel plainly to them in those Hindu languages, and we need to translate the Bible into their native languages, and we need to set up a press to print those Bibles, and we need to teach them how to read their own language so that they can understand the Bible, we need to do all of… Those are the means. We need to use means to the conversion of the heathen, but we have an obligation to do it.

This is NOT a command… it is a Sovereign Declaration

Okay, that’s the lesson of the commands. But I already said that this verse isn’t a command. This is not a command here, this is a statement of future fact, it’s a sovereign statement of future fact. “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”

And I’m celebrating that sovereign declaration with you today. It’s going to happen. Absolutely, certainly going to happen. He is not telling his apostles something they should do, he’s telling them something that will most certainly happen. That’s what he’s telling them. Something that will most certainly come to pass. It is absolutely certain. In effect, Jesus was saying that witnesses filled with the burning heart of love for Christ and the lost, filled with the Holy Spirit, will travel over the burning sands of the desert and through forbidding rocky and snowy mountain passes, and they’ll go across the seemingly endless, boundless waves of the South Pacific to cannibal filled islands there, and they will be willing to pay this price to get the gospel preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations. This will absolutely happen.

II. The Prophecy Explained

Message: “This Gospel of the Kingdom”

Now, what I wanna do is I wanna go very carefully word by word, phrase by phrase, through this one, this one verse, and explain it to you. First, the message. “This gospel of the kingdom.” This gospel. The word “gospel” comes straight over from the Greek language meaning “good news.” I’m not gonna break the Greek word apart, but literally, it’s got a prefix and a central root that means “good news.”

And this good news of the kingdom, this good news of the kingdom, the idea is of a king, sovereign, who sits on a throne and rules, the King of the kingdom of heaven is really the unifying theme of the gospel of Matthew. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. From the very beginning of Matthew’s gospel, the genealogy and right on through, we get a sense of the right Jesus has to rule over us and rule in this world, the kingdom, Christ himself, the centerpiece of that kingdom. And that is the good news, the good news is the King. The good news is God Almighty seated on a throne. That’s good news.

Jesus said earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you.” And I explained when I preached on that passage, the yoke represents Jesus’ right to rule over your life. His kingly authority to govern you and move you right or left, or have you go straight. The kingly rule of Jesus. “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you’ll find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Jesus is inviting you to come into the kingdom with those words. There’d be no sense in me preaching on this one verse without inviting any who have never trusted in Christ to come and trust in Jesus.

Take that stubborn neck of yours, that stiff neck of yours that’s been rebelling against God all these years. We all know about that. We still struggle with our own stiff necks; we’re all the same. Put it under Jesus’ yoke and you’ll never regret it. Come to Jesus, follow him. Let his blood shed on the cross be sufficient for all of your acts of rebellion. Past, present and future. Come to Jesus. This is the kingdom, this is the good news, because what you’re gonna find when you come into the kingdom is the perfection of the king, and how good and delightful he is, and how wonderful it will be to sit at his table and to talk with him and to obey his commands. It’s good news, the kingdom.

And I love what it says, “this gospel of the kingdom.” This one that’s going on right in front of you. He’s speaking to men who are unique in redemptive history, they were the apostles, they were the eyewitnesses of his glory, Peter calls himself. They saw things you and I didn’t see, they heard things with their own ears we don’t get to hear. They were the eyewitnesses. They were the first link in the chain of church history, right to Jesus, the incarnation. And they saw what he did and what he said, they heard his words. When the woman anoints him with expensive perfume, he says, “Wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.”

So there was a sense of, there were little camcorders, little recorders, taking in the history of Jesus, taking in the events of his life, just being there. And don’t worry about them forgetting, because it says in John 14, “The Spirit, the Comforter, the Counselor, will come and he will remind you of everything I said to you.” Ordinarily, they may have been very forgetful individuals. Not when it came to Jesus’ words and actions; they remembered everything, wrote it down for us. This gospel, the one about Jesus, that’s the message.

Method: “Will be Preached”

What is the method? Well, it’s going to be preached, it’s going to be proclaimed by word, messengers are gonna go and they’re gonna stand up in front of people and speak words about Jesus, and without that, no one gets saved. It says in Romans 10, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then can they call on the one in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in one of whom they’ve never heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.’” The good news about Jesus, the good news.

Somebody’s gotta go and tell him a biography, they gotta go and tell them about Jesus, who he is. They don’t know who he is, never heard of him. Some people have to go and they have to preach this message, because “faith comes by hearing,” it says there in Romans 10:17, it’s got to be preached, it’s got to be proclaimed.

Nowadays, there are some so-called “new evangelicals” who have a heart for social work, a heart for the urban scene, a heart for decaying cities and physical suffering they see brought about by sin, and they ought to because Jesus had a far greater heart for those things that they did. But they’re saying foolish things, some of them, like this one: “Preach the gospel. Use words, if necessary.” Where in the world did that come from? We’re told St. Francis of Assisi said it, he disavows all knowledge of it, according to the internet anyway. “He never said it,” he says, or at least some Catholic scholars are saying he never said it.

Well, it doesn’t matter whether he said or not, some evangelical so called are saying it. You wanna know what they’re saying? Just let the gospel ethic, just the good life that comes from being a Christian, just so shine around the people of your lives that they’re just gonna get saved by watching you, how good you are. Well, to start, I would suggest, if you’re married, just ask your spouse if that’s gonna cut it. Alright? Am I just so good that people just by watching me are just gonna wanna come into the kingdom? And that will end your career right there on that one. “Preach the gospel. Use words, if necessary.” Let’s try this one on for size: “Feed starving children. Use food if necessary.” Friends, the food is necessary to feed the starving children, and the words are necessary to get these people saved. We’ve got to proclaim this message, we’ve gotta tell them about Jesus, we’ve gotta speak to them. That’s the method that God has chosen, the preaching of the gospel, and he’s got reasons for doing it, but I don’t have time to say it, it just humbles us to just hear a preached message and believe it, and we get saved.

Scope: “In the Whole World”

Thirdly, look at the scope. It’s going to be done in the whole world. In the whole world. Jesus’ eyes are on the whole world. Sitting on that rocky Mount of Olives looking out over Jerusalem before his death, he’s thinking about the whole world. Yes, he was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel, but his heart was always for the whole world. Now, the Greek word here means “the inhabited world,” the places where people live. I believe that sin, the curse of sin has made some uninhabitable places of the world. I don’t think it was that way from the beginning, but it’s that way now. And so therefore, this is not talking about uninhabited places, but actually the Greek here intensifies it, “the whole of the inhabited world.

The gospel is going to be preached in the whole of the inhabited world, not a single inhabited place will be missed. The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. So there’s no strategy needed for the uninhabited portions of the world, you don’t need to go to Antarctica, you don’t need to go to Northern Greenland, you don’t need to go to the seabed of the Pacific Ocean and preach to those nasty-looking creatures down there. We’re going where people are living their lives, the inhabited world, that’s where we’re going, and we’re going to preach to them.

Purpose: “As a Testimony to All Nations”

And what is the purpose? Well, it’s going to be preached as a testimony, it says, to all nations. The word testimony, in my mind at least, brings the sense of a court trial, some kind of a proof’s given, this kind of thing. It’s an effort to persuade. And so the proclamation is going to be an effort to persuade, to prove something, to perhaps reluctant audience. And the nature of the proof has to do with the identity of the King, King Jesus. Who is he? What did he do? And of their need to repent and come into the kingdom. They need to have a testimony about this, the evidence of the deity of Christ, the proof of his miracles, the testimony of eyewitnesses who saw him physically, bodily, raised from the dead on the third day. We’re gonna give testimony about these things, we’re going to give persuasions.

The evidence that the prophets brought forth that Jesus didn’t suddenly appear on the stage of redemptive history, but his coming was long expected. Come thou long expected Jesus. He came in fulfillment of the prophets. We’ve got to bring all of this evidence out and reason with people, and explain and prove from the scriptures that Jesus is the Christ.

There’s a testimony there, and it’s going to be given, it says, to all nations. Again, we have this Greek word “ethne” from which we get “ethnic,” it has to do with the understanding that we in missions have come to really relatively recently, that it’s not enough to go just to the political nations, like the political nation of India. William Carey brought the Gospel to the political nation of India, years, centuries ago. But Donald McGavran, a missionary there, a very careful observer of cultures and languages and customs and habits, said, “You know, there are just thousands of different people groups or identifiable ethnic groups, ethnes, so to speak, here in India. We’ve got to take the gospel to each one of them.” And so there is this understanding that we’re going to cultural, linguistic, identifiable people groups.

And they need to hear the gospel. Jesus is saying they will. Jesus is saying they’re going to hear. Every ethnic group on the face of the earth is going to have a clear proclamation of the testimony of the Gospel.

Result: “And Then, the End will Come”

And what is the result? Then the end will come. The end will come. For us who have believed in Jesus, it’s a good end. For those who have not believed in Jesus, a dreadful end, more than you can possibly imagine, but the end is going to come. We’re not going on like this forever. The end is coming.

III. The Power Behind the Prophecy

The Absolute Sovereignty of God

Alright, well, that’s word by word, through the verse. Let me talk now about the power behind this prophecy, there is a power behind these words. These are not idle words spoken by some man sitting on a rock. This is the Sovereign God telling us what he’s going to do. The absolute sovereignty of God. Only God, in my opinion, can make any kind of certain statement about the future; none of us can. I mean, that’s even down to the small details of weather, or who wins a sporting event or other things like that, only God knows really.

But how much more is it true that only a great God can make a great proclamation like this and make it come true? The sheer number of things that would have to happen to make this occur are boggling to the mind. No one missionary could do all this. No one generation of missionaries could do all this. It was too immense even for the faith-filled and faithful apostles to achieve, too big a job for them.

Christ is predicting the mobilization of generation after generation of men and women who will be willing to lay down their lives for the cause of the gospel. Christ knows full well that some of these servants will die in the effort, they will fall into the ground and die, in the language of John 12. He knows that, and what Christ is stating here is, no matter how high the cost, this is going to get done.

The Power of the Holy Spirit over Human Hearts

So how can that happen? How can he be so certain? How can we know that this most certainly will come to pass? The sovereign power of Almighty God guarantees this. And specifically, the link down to earth is the power of the Spirit of God over individual human hearts to turn them from sin and selfishness and get them to do his will. And I think that’s powerful. That he can do that. Acts 1:8, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.” And you’re not going to be able to live the way you used to be living. You’re not gonna do the same things you used to be doing. When the Holy Spirit comes on you, you’re going to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. You will go when the Spirit comes on you.

Take a minute, and I wasn’t gonna do this, but look over in Ezekiel 2. I think this may be the simplest statement you’ll find in the whole Bible about this power that I’m referring to here, the power of this sovereign Spirit of God over your heart and mine. Look at Ezekiel 2:1-2. “He said to me,” this is Ezekiel, “he said to me, ‘Son of man’” – that was God’s name for Ezekiel – “‘son of man, stand up on your feet, and I will speak to you.’” Verse 2, “As he spoke, the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet.” That’s about as simple, mathematical as you’re ever gonna get. The command comes, “Stand up on your feet.” The Spirit enters, and he found himself standing on his feet. That’s the first step of the missionary journey right there. I’m praying that the Holy Spirit will come on us and get us to stand on our feet, and to do the things that God has commanded us to do. And he has that power. And there is a mysterious combination between the command, “Son of man, stand on your feet,” and the Spirit coming and empowering obedience to that command. It’s a mystery, you can’t have the one without the other. We have to have the sense of the command of our king, but then the power of the Holy Spirit to make it so. So go back to Matthew 24:14, but I think this is the display of it, the Holy Spirit has the power to transform our selfish hearts and turn them to God and to others. He has that power.

The Power to Thrust Out Laborers … Even at Great Cost

Jesus, in Matthew 9, “When he saw the crowds, that they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd, he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out laborers into his harvest field.’” Well, the words “send out” in the NIV are a bit tame. “Ekballo” is the Greek word. “Throw them out.” Alright, it’s the same word used for casting out demons, the same kind of power that can cast out a demon can thrust out laborers into the harvest field. Amen and Amen.

He has the power to come on you and get you to change the whole way you live, so that from then on, you’re doing something different. Change your career, you change your life, you change the direction and the flow of your life, and you do something different from then on. Now, here he’s saying, “Ask the Lord of the harvest to do it.” So he’s involving us in God sending out the Holy Spirit to do that. It’s just amazing how deep and mysterious all this is, but we are to pray to the Lord of the harvest saying, “God send them out, drive out those laborers into the harvest field.”

A Holy Compulsion

And so I think what we’re talking about here is a holy compulsion that just comes over you, you’re just compelled by the Spirit, as Paul refers to in Acts 20. “And now compelled by the Spirit, I’m going to Jerusalem.” There’s a compulsion of the spirit. There are examples of this over and over in the Bible. Look, for example, at Jeremiah 20. Don’t turn there now, but in Jeremiah 20, Jeremiah comes to God and says, “Oh Lord, you deceived me about my job description, you never told me how awful it would be to do this job.”

Aside, I’ll say it again. I think Jeremiah had the hardest ministry in the Old Testament. I would rather be anybody in the Old Testament than Jeremiah. What a tough, tough job to be there, to be the one to turn out the lights on Jerusalem when the Babylonians were done with the place, to sit there over the hill and weep over it, as flames are just dying out and the smoke is rising and everyone’s dead or gone. And you get to be the one to predict it and be there when it happens. And to be hated by the ones you are… Tough ministry.

But at any rate, Jeremiah goes back to his employer, back to God and says, “You deceived me, oh, Lord.” But then he goes on and says this, “If I say I will not mention him or speak anymore in his name, his word is like a fire in my heart. It’s like a fire shut up in my bones. I’m weary of holding it in. Indeed, I cannot hold it in.” That’s a compulsion that comes over you by the Spirit, you can’t do anything but this work of God.

So also the Apostle Paul. His work was linked together with his salvation. “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” “Who are you, Lord?” “I am Jesus, the one that you’re persecuting. Now, get up and go into the city and you’ll be told what you must do.” Well, the word “must” became pretty obvious to Paul immediately what that meant. He had no choice. And so in 1 Corinthians 9:16, he says, “Yet when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, for I am compelled to preach. Woe unto me if I do not preach!” That’s a compulsion of the spirit that comes on

And how does it work? Well, I’ve thought about this and I think it works by love. I really think what happens is the Spirit comes and moves love in our hearts. 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, it says, “For the love of Christ constrains us” – or compels us or controls us, different ways to translate that – “because we have concluded this, that one died for all, and therefore all have died, that he who died for all should no longer live for themselves, that we should no longer live for ourselves, but for him who died for us.”

Basically, there’s a kind of lifestyle I’m proclaiming here today, lifestyle of full on flat out obedience to the Great Commission in whatever role God has for you. And the alternative is that you should live for yourself. Those are your two options. I really believe it. It really just comes down to that. And Paul is saying that we should no longer live for ourselves, but for him who died for us and was raised again.

Well, what moves him to do it? The love of Christ constrains us. Now, I meditated on that phrase, it’s a little tricky, and I think it may even be meant to be. What is this love of Christ constrains us mean? Is it the love we have for Jesus or is it the love that Jesus displayed in his life for sinners? How about both? How about we don’t choose? How about we love Christ so much we want to get on a ship and go and say, “May the lamb get what he deserves,” that we can live like that. I just love Jesus, am filled with the love that I have, that Jesus get what he deserves. The love of Christ, the love we have for Jesus. Or could it be the kind of love that Jesus displayed for sinners in dying on the cross for them? I wanna live like that. I think it’s both.

But in any case, it constrains us. The same Greek word is used in Luke 12:50. Jesus speaking about his own crucifixion, “I have a baptism to be baptized with. And how constrained I am until it’s finished. I can’t turn to the right or the left, I’ve got to finish this work.” Well, again and again in church history, servants of Christ have spoken like constrained people. They’ve talked like this.

Hudson Taylor is a prime example. He was called to be a missionary to China. He went there, he had some very indifferent experiences with the mission agencies. The missionaries were all on the coastline of China, none of them venturing out much into Chinese society, they’re living comfortable lives in the mission stations, and he was becoming disillusioned. He decided to go native, go inland to become kind of as Chinese as he possibly could be. He went with the Chinese hairstyle and garb and all that, so much that people that saw him and knew before thought, they didn’t recognize him at all, thought he was just a Chinese man.

The mission group there rejected his methods entirely and his zeal, they didn’t want any part of him, so he went back to England for many reasons, but to raise support. And then he says this, he was just thinking about the inland regions of China. On Sunday, June 25th, 1865, he said, “Unable to bear the sight of a congregation of a thousand or more Christian people rejoicing in their own security while millions were perishing for lack of knowledge. I wandered out on the sands alone,” listen, “in great spiritual agony. And there the Lord conquered my unbelief.” He had seen a map of China, and he called it the accusing map of China, had huge sections of the country, none of them had ever heard of Jesus, called it the accusing map. And this was the burden on him, the inland regions. “In great spiritual agony, and there the Lord conquered my unbelief, and I surrendered myself to God for this service. I told him that all of the responsibility as to issues and consequences must rest with him; that as his servant it was mine to obey and follow him, his to direct, to care for, to guide those who might labor with me. Need I say that the peace of God at once flowed into my heart. It was indescribable.” So there’s a man constrained. He lived the rest of his life for this one burden, and that was to bring the Gospel to the inland regions of China.

IV. The Prophecy Fulfilled: Already and Not Yet

Now, this prediction of Jesus, is it fulfilled? Can I say the words with great joy? Almost, almost, but not yet. I know it’s not yet ’cause we’re here. Jesus hasn’t come back yet. He said, “And then the end will come.” The end hasn’t come, there’s still work to be done

Already: Huge Portions of the World Reached with the Gospel

But there’s less work to be done now, a lot less than there was 50 years ago. The progress has been astonishing. Friends, this isn’t a losing battle. If you’re a bandwagon person, this is the bandwagon to jump on, this is the one to pitch in on and get involved. This is the one to invest your life in. This one. This is going to win. It’s amazing, there’s not a geographical nation on earth that doesn’t have a vibrant church. That could not have been said 25 years ago.

I mean, all of the United Nations type nations, all of them have witnesses. That was not true when I was in college. The Berlin Wall was still standing then, there were countries like Albania, others like Mongolia, Morocco, some of those Northern African nations, Muslim nations, there were no churches there, that’s no longer the case. Praise God. And then once Donald McGavran gave the idea of the unreached people groups, they started counting them, and the count down’s been going down.

24,000 in 1950, the estimate was. When I was in college, the number was 17,000. In 1992, it was down to 11,000. In ’96 estimates put it around 9,000. It’s about half of what it was when I was in college. Today, joshuaproject.net, who keeps track of these things, puts the number at 6,644. It just keeps coming down. And many, many local churches have adopted unreached people groups and have just made it their focus to be sure that there’s a Gospel Church planted in that unreached people group. It’s just incredible the kinds of things that are happening, I don’t have time to go through the statistics. Bottom line is the church is exploding and growing all the time.

Listen to this, in A.D 100, there were 360 non-Christians, estimate, 360 non-Christians for every one believer. Today, the number is seven to one. Get this one, this is even better, I love this. In A.D 100, it was estimated that there were 12 unreached people groups per local church congregation. Today there are 500 local congregations for every unreached people group. See, all we need to do is get the other 499 congregations together and choose an unreached people group and go reach them. Boy, they’re gonna be overwhelmed when all 500 churches show up to reach that one unreached people group.

Not Yet: The Work Still to Do

Friends, this is a doable task, but there’s still work to be done, there’s still just four billion people have never heard the name of Jesus. Most of them, the 10/40 window, the longitude lines there, the 10/40 latitude lines, the 10/40 window. Muslim nations, India, China, there’s a lot of work to be done, and it’s still true that Americans spend… American evangelicals spend more money on dog food than they do on missions. May it never be.

V. Applications

Rejoice in the Sovereignty of Christ

Bottom line, can I say this just application, let’s rejoice in the sovereignty of Christ, let’s see what he’s achieved already, let’s give him the praise and the glory of 20 centuries of astonishing achievement. Say, to God be the glory for what you have done. To God be the glory for raising up men and women who are willing to lay down their lives for the Gospel.

Be Confident in the Final Outcome

And be confident, very confident in the final outcome: he’s going to win.

Pray Confidently for More Laborers for this Vast Harvest

Based on Matthew 9, pray confidently to the Lord of the harvest to send out, thrust out, laborers into the harvest field. Pray it a lot, pray it fervently. Pray it confidently. But you know what might happen if you start praying that prayer, you know what might happen? He might actually send you out into the harvest field. Pray for it. Draw near to God every single day.

Draw Near to God Daily

If you don’t have a heart for the nations, if you don’t have a heart for missions, it’s because you’re distant spiritually from God, this is his heart, he’s made it plain everywhere. Kevin quoted, I think it was Psalm 67, that’s God’s heart, that the nations might praise him. If that’s not your heart, you’re distant from God. Draw near to God, fix your relationship with God first, repent of known sin. Have your quiet times, draw close to him, and say, “Lord, give me a heart for the nations, and give me a heart for the lost coworker that’s in the next cubicle.” It’s all of a piece. It’s all together. So draw close and ask God to give you an unreached people group to pray for. Go to joshuaproject.net and choose one. You get to pick the continent. I mean, whatever you want, go pick one and pray for it for the rest of the year, 2010.

Be Earnest Not to Be Left Out

And this is the one that convicted me the most, it is absolutely guaranteed, absolutely guaranteed that Jesus will finish this, that this promise will take place, but it’s not guaranteed that I’ll have anything to do with it. There’s no Bible verse that tells me that, I, Andy Davis, will have anything to do with Matthew 24:14, or you. There’s no guarantee that FBC Durham will be having anything to do with this at all 20 years from now. We have got to be faithful. We have got to say to the Lord, “Make me… Please don’t pass me by, please don’t leave me behind, please don’t, as you move on ahead in success and triumph, leave me out. I wanna be part of it, Lord. Give me a burden, give me a heart after the nations, give me a heart after missions, so that I can be part of what you’re doing in the world. And make sure that my local church is part of it, too. I don’t wanna go to a church that’s not not doing this, I’ll leave that church. I wanna be a part of a church where this command is our command. This prediction is our command, we are moving out based on this, praying for unreached people groups, praying for the missionaries we have sent out.”

Pray for FBC to be a Launching Pad for Missions

Pray that FBC would be a launching pad for missions. We’ve seen a lot of brothers and sisters go out from here. Heavenly, what a joy. But I would say the overwhelming majority, if not all of them, came in here with a preconceived or pre-sense of call to the missions, and what we did was, we tried to shepherd that and be good stewards of it and furthered it long. Praise God that that happened. But I’d like to see someone who comes in here even today, without even any thought of missions, and then through the ministry of the church, through the influence of other brothers and sisters in Christ, develop that call and we launch them out in five years. That would be awesome. Wouldn’t that be great? Pray that that would happen in this church. Close with me in prayer.

These are only preliminary, unedited outlines and may differ from Andy’s final message.

On a rocky mountainside in Palestine, a young rabbi of a small Jewish sect sat surrounded by his earnest followers and made a sweeping prediction:

Matthew 24:14  And this gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

That prediction would be one of the costliest predictions Jesus ever made.  It would cost the lives of countless thousands over two thousand years to make it come true.  It would bring pain and disease and injuries and tears and torture and blood and tragic funerals and incalculable sorrow to those who would see to it that it happened. The preaching of the gospel in every nation has been incalculably expensive…

Examples abound from Church History:

October 8, 1732:  a sailing vessel pulled away from the wharf in Copenhagen, Denmark.  On board were John Leonard Dober, a potter, and David Nitschman, a carpenter, who were leaving the security of their jobs and families in Copenhagen to become the first Moravian missionaries.  In a prayer meeting, they had both felt the call to come and minister the gospel to the slaves of the sugar plantations of St. Thomas in the West Indies.  They knew that the only way to reach these slaves was to become slaves themselves… so they voluntarily sold themselves into slavery to reach the lost people.  One of the men left his wife and children begging on the wharf for him to reconsider and stay. But the call and heart of God for these slaves in the West Indies was even greater than the pull of home. As the ship pulled away from the docks the men lifted a cry, “May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of His suffering” which became the resonating heartbeat of the Moravian Missions movement.

The cost they paid was very high… so was the cost of Adoniram Judson who buried two different wives and six children in five different locations… whose sorrow over the loss of his first wife, Ann, was so profound that he dug his own grave and sat by it for hours staring into it… But despite this immense cost, Judson fulfilled in part Christ’s amazing prediction… the gospel of the Kingdom was preached in Burma as a testimony to them

Their spirit—their drive—was to fulfill the Great Commission, even if it cost them their lives.  It also motivated the Student Volunteer Movement missionaries to Africa in the 19^th century who packed their belongings in their own coffins because the life expectancy of missionaries to the jungles of Africa at that time was 18 months because of tropical fevers.  80% did in fact die within two years of their arrival.

It motivated William Borden, 1909 graduate of Yale University and heir to the Borden family fortune who was converted to Christianity and gave his life to become a missionary to Muslims in China… he died of spinal meningitis during his training in Egypt;  his grieving parents were given his Bible;  In it they found in one place the words “No Reserve” and a date placing the note shortly after he renounced his fortune in favor of missions. At a later point, he had written “No Retreat”, dated shortly after he was diagnosed with meningitis. Shortly before he died, he added the phrase “No Regrets.”

This is the kind of commitment it would take to make Jesus’ words come true!!

How is it that Jesus, sitting on a rocky mountainside overlooking Jerusalem, could predict that twenty centuries of His followers would be willing to sacrifice everything they had to preach the gospel all over the world?

How could he be so certain that it would ever get that far?

The answer to these questions is the focus of this sermon!!

Context:

o   Jesus’ statement about the destruction of the Temple

o   The disciples’ private question

o   Matthew 24:  Jesus’ teaching on the end of the world

o   Matthew 24:4-14  The nature of life between the first and second comings of Christ

§  Vs. 4-5  Warning about false Christs and false teaching

§  Vs. 6-8  the “beginning of birth pains”:  wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes… the convulsions of a sin-sick planet

§  Vs. 9-13  the specific sufferings of the church:  apostasy, betrayals, hatred, persecution… the need to “stand firm to the end” in order to be saved

§  Then… verse 14… the great sign of the end of the world… the reason WHY Christ is waiting to return

I. Not a Command But a Prophecy

A. Christ’s Saving Purpose

1. Why He came to begin with

Luke 19:10  the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.

2. Why He is waiting to return

2 Peter 3:9  The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

2 Peter 3:15  Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation,

B. Many Commands for Evangelism

1. We don’t lack for commands in the New Testament that we ought to be involved in evangelism and missions

2. There are FOUR VERSIONS of the “Great Commission”, one in each of the Gospels

Matthew 28:19-20  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

a. Note the clear commands:  “GO” and “MAKE DISCIPLES of ALL NATIONS” and “BAPTIZE THEM” and “TEACH THEM TO OBEY EVERYTHING”

b. Note also the implication that this commission is for the church until the end of time:  “I am with you always, to the end of the age”

Other versions as well:

Mark 16:15-16  He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.  ¹⁶ Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

Romans 16:26-27  by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him–  ²⁷ to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.

The writing and proclamation of the gospel has been COMMANDED by the eternal God!!

C. The Lesson of the Commands:  We Have an Obligation

Romans 1:14-16  I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish.  ¹⁵ That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome.  ¹⁶ ¶ I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes

This was the DEBT of Paul’s life… he OWED the gospel to lost people…

WE should not feel any less obligation!

That was why, in 1792, William Carey, the father of the modern Protestant missions movement wrote a tract entitled

An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens

Carey was arguing against a PASSIVE view of the Great Commission that, if God wanted the heathens (unreached peoples of the world) converted, He could do it Himself without us

Carey was arguing that we have an OBLIGATION… we OWE it to them to do what we can to reach them with the gospel

And we are to use MEANS… there are practical things we can do, while trusting in the sovereignty of God to make them effective… we are to get on ships, he would say, and sail to India, and set up missions stations, and study the Hindu languages, and preach the gospel plainly to them, and translate the Bible into their native tongues, and set up printing presses, and print those bibles, and teach the people how to read, and establish local churches… etc.

These are MEANS to the end of the conversion of the heathens

We OUGHT to do it

However… I want you to notice the grammar of the text this morning…

D. This is NOT a command… it is a Sovereign Declaration

Matthew 24:14  And this gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

1. There is not a word of command in this declaration

2. Jesus is not telling His apostles something they should DO… he has already done that before and will do it again after He has risen

3. But here, when tracing out with His prophetic power the future of the world, He is not at this moment commanding them to do ANYTHING… He is merely stating what must CERTAINLY come to pass

E. The Lesson of this Declaration:  This WILL HAPPEN!!!

1. The main point of this sermon is to give you a sense of absolute CERTAINTY about the completion of the Great Commission

2. It is CERTAIN that this Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached

3. It is CERTAIN that every nation on the face of the earth will hear its words

4. It is CERTAIN that witnesses will travel over the burning sands of the desert, through the snowy and forbidding mountain passes of the highest mountain ranges on earth, through the steamy, dark jungles of Africa and the Amazonian rain forests, over the seemingly endless waves of the southern Pacific ocean to reach the distant islands of cannibals… it is ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that witnesses will be raised up, motivated, trained, prepared, funded, and sent out… it is absolutely certain that they will arrive and proclaim faithfully the true gospel… the native people will hear it proclaimed as a testimony…

5. Almighty God, speaking by the perfect tongue of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, throws His sovereignty behind this one statement:

The Great Commission WILL BE COMPLETED!!!!  Nothing can stop it!!!

II. The Prophecy Explained

A. Message:  “This Gospel of the Kingdom”

1. Notice Christ’s words “THIS gospel…”

a. Implied is that the gospel is being taught and lived out in front of them by Jesus Christ Himself

b. The word “Gospel” is the English translation of the Greek word “evangelion”… the Greek prefix “eu” comes over into English as “ev” and it means “GOOD”… the word “angelion” means “message” or “news”

c. This “good news” is the very thing Christ had been teaching them about and displaying before them for these three years

d. The KINGDOM was the focus of everything Christ came to do… the Kingdom is the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven… the realm where God rules, where His subjects delight to obey Him… where sin is defeated and order restored

e. Christ HIMSELF is the centerpiece of that Kingdom… He is the King of the Kingdom of heaven

f. It is GOOD NEWS because His kingly reign is so perfect, so good, so wonderful

Matthew 11:28-30  “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  ³⁰ For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

John Piper’s recent book God IS the Gospel

The GOOD NEWS is GOD HIMSELF… His character, His holiness, He power, His beauty, His wisdom, His love… all of that given to you as a result of the forgiveness of sins through the blood of Christ shed on the cross…

By believing in the gospel, you get GOD… and that is infinitely good news

2. Also “THIS gospel of the Kingdom”… it implies that the gospel is being lived out in space and time right before their eyes

a. The history of Jesus is the centerpiece of the gospel

b. His miraculous birth… His sinless life… His powerful miracles… His deep and perfect teachings…. His astonishing promises… His gentle character and tender mercy

c. The disciples were WITNESSES of the life that He lived… and that life was the center of the GOOD NEWS

d. Jesus knew very well that the apostles had been chosen to watch, to experience the physical life that Christ lived on earth… their EYEWITNESS accounts of His life would be the basis of the gospel

e. They were like little CAMCORDERS… their eyes taking in the sights of Jesus, their ears absorbing the sounds of His voice, their skin sensing the cold of the stormy sea that He stilled… THIS gospel of the Kingdom… the one that was lived out in front of you

B. Method:  “Will be preached”

1. The only way to convey THIS gospel is by WORD

2. Christ would entrust the salvation of souls to WORDS… a message PROCLAIMED… PREACHED

3. Messengers would travel over land and sea and would stand and proclaim a message to hearers

4. Faith would come by HEARING this message

Romans 10:13-17  “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”  ¹⁴ ¶ How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?  ¹⁵ And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” …   ¹⁷ So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

5. The method will never change… words must be spoken…

a. Nowadays, new “evangelicals” who have a heart for the decaying cities of the world are saying foolish things like

“Preach the gospel… use words if necessary!”

Sometimes attributed to St. Francis of Assisi

It is like saying

“Feed starving children… use food if necessary!”

The implication is that the gospel is “preached” by our actions as we clean up an junk-filled abandoned lot and plant trees and make it a park for urban children to play in

Friends… that is NOT preaching the gospel… it may give you a platform to preach the gospel, but it is NOT preaching the gospel

WORDS ARE NECESSARY… the gospel words about Christ’s life, death, and resurrection are the POWER OF GOD FOR SALVATION of people who believe

6. What Jesus is saying here is that the message will MOST CERTAINLY be preached

C. Scope:  “In the whole world”

1. Jesus’ eyes are on the WHOLE WORLD… the Greek here means the “inhabited” world… the place where people have built their homes

2. Furthermore, the Greek intensifies this…the WHOLE of the INHABITED world… it is intensive, it is clear… not a single inhabited place will be missed

3. From the beginning, the God who made this globe has intended that it be inhabited throughout with people who will glorify Him for its beauty

4. Habakkuk 2:14 sums up God’s consistent desire in this

Habakkuk 2:14 For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.

5. So Jesus is asserting that there will not be a single inhabited portion of the globe that does not receive a proclamation of the gospel message

6. There is no strategy needed for the uninhabited portions of the globe… for Greenland, for the Sahara desert, for the Antarctic, for the Pacific Ocean floor, etc.

7. It’s PEOPLE we’re after… wherever the PEOPLE are

D. Purpose:  “As a testimony to all nations”

1. The word “testimony” implies a need to PERSUADE… to PROVE the nature of the Kingdom and the identity of the KING…

2. People’s hearts need to be changed… evidence needs to be presented… this will happen by the PROCLAMATION of the gospel message

a. The evidence of the deity of Christ asserted

b. The proof of his miracles

c. The testimony of eyewitnesses concerning His bodily resurrection from the dead

d. The goal of this preaching is PERSUASION… pleading… reasoning

e. The evidence of the prophets is brought forth… of fulfilled prophecy to prove the identity of Christ

3. “All nations” = Greek word from which we get the word “ethnic”

a. Much work done on this concept since the middle of the twentieth century…

b. The idea from Donald McGavran’s writings… he was a missionary in India and observed different ethnic and linguistic groupings within the geographical region in which he was working… it wasn’t enough to send missionaries to “India” as a political nation, and say the nation was “reached” with the gospel… there are ethnic groups within the nation that are distinct… they have their own language, their own culture, their own history, their own marriage customs… they don’t mingle with people from other ethnic groups… this is what “ethne” means in the Greek

Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization:

There are several facets to the way people groups are identified: Linguistic, cultural, social, economic, geographic, religious, and political factors can each be part of what gives formation to the peoples of the earth. From the viewpoint of evangelism, a “people group” is the largest possible group within which the gospel can spread as a discipling, or church planting movement without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance

c. Mission strategists go on to define “unreached”

Joshua Project:  A people group among which there is no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize this people group.

4. Jesus is saying that this gospel of the Kingdom WILL be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations

5. Revelation 7 goes beyond this to show that there will be ELECT from EVERY nation on earth effectively won to Christ

6. But in Matthew 24:14, Jesus is merely saying that the gospel will be preached to them

E. Result:  “And then, the end will come”

1. The implication:  this is the work Christ is wanting to get done before the end of the world

2. ONLY WHEN this gospel of the Kingdom is preached as a testimony to all nations will the end come

III. The Power Behind the Prophecy

A. The Absolute Sovereignty of God

1. Only God can make ANY kind of prediction about the future… even including small matters like weather or sporting events

2. BUT only a GREAT GOD can make this kind of a GREAT prediction about the future

3. The sheer number of things that had to happen to make this a reality are mind-boggling

a. No one missionary could do all this work

b. It was too immense for the Twelve Apostles as well

c. Christ is predicting the mobilization of generation after generation of men and women who will be willing to lay down their lives for the advance of the gospel

d. Christ knows full well that some parts of the world will require martyrs… people who will DIE to reach that tribe with the gospel

e. Christ is stating here:  NO MATTER WHAT THE COST, this work will actually be finished

4. Only a Sovereign God can make this happen

B. The Power of the Holy Spirit over Human Hearts

1. Key issue:  the power of the Holy Spirit to transform the hearts of His people and make them willing to die for others

Acts 1:8  But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

2. The power works FIRST on the hearts of the messengers, THEN on the hearts of those who hear

3. The Holy Spirit has the power to transform our selfish hearts, our materialistic hearts, our comfort-loving hearts

C. The Power to Thrust Out Laborers… Even at Great Cost

Matthew 9:36-38  When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.  ³⁷ Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.  ³⁸ Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

1. The prayer of Matthew 9 rests on the sovereignty of God to transform hearts

2. The Greek there is almost violent:  THRUST OUT laborers

a. Greek is “ekballo” used frequently in describing the casting out of demons

b. It has to do with a forceful ejection

c. The implication is that the same force that COMPELS a demon to leave a man is that which will compel a missionary to leave the comforts and pleasures of home to go to a distant land and preach the gospel

3. The Holy Spirit has this kind of power

D. A Holy Compulsion

1. The Holy Spirit can make it impossible to resist His call

2. The Holy Spirit can put a fire in our hearts and drive us to do missions

3. Examples:  Jeremiah and Paul

a. Jeremiah… persecuted and hated because of his preaching of God’s word, resolves to stop doing it… BUT

Jeremiah 20:9  if I say, “I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,” his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.

b. So also the Apostle Paul

1 Corinthians 9:16  Yet when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, for I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!

4. The compulsion of the Love of Christ

a. The Holy Spirit ministers essentially positively

b. The CONSTRAINT of the love of Christ

2 Corinthians 5:14-15  For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died;  ¹⁵ and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

“Controls” = “holds us fast” like in a form of bondage… we can’t go anywhere else… we are in some sense CONSTRAINED by the mission God has laid on our hearts

Like Jesus, as He thought about His own mission:

^RSV Luke 12:50 I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!

c. What “constrains us”?  the “Love of Christ”…

i) Either “the love that characterized Christ” or “the love directed to Christ”

ii) Either way… it CONSTRAINS us… forces us to preach the gospel

Examples:

Hudson Taylor

1.  Served as a missionary in the Shanghai area in 1854, but soon grew depressed around other missionaries, who lived luxurious lifestyles

2.  decided to move further inland, and totally immersed himself in Chinese ways

3.  In 1857, resigned from his mission agency because they rejected his immersion lifestyle and because their financial support was erratic

4.  Returned to England.  In 1865, Hudson Taylor began a new era in Protestant missions when he stared at the “accusing map” of China on the wall of his study.  He became increasingly burdened for the inland regions of China, and committed his life to bringing the gospel to those inland provinces.  He was in Brighton in England when he wrote these words:

“On Sunday, June 25, 1865, unable to bear the sight of a congregation of a thousand or more Christian people rejoicing in their own security while millions were perishing for lack of knowledge, I wandered out on the sands alone, in great spiritual agony, and there the Lord conquered my unbelief, and I surrendered myself to God for this service.  I told Him that all the responsibility as to issues and consequences must rest with Him; that as His servant, it was mine to obey and follow Him—His to direct, to care for, and to guide those who might labor with me.  Need I say that peace at once flowed into my burdened heart.”

E. Psalm 110 Fulfilled

Psalm 110:1-3  The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”  ² The LORD will extend your mighty scepter from Zion; you will rule in the midst of your enemies.  ³ Your troops will be willing on your day of battle.

The Holy Spirit has made twenty centuries of missionaries WILLING in the day of Christ’s battle

IV. The Prophecy Fulfilled:  Already and Not Yet

A. Already:  Huge Portions of the World Reached with the Gospel

1. Olivet Discourse:  Jesus sat on the rocky mountainside and made this astonishing prediction to a tiny band of followers… the message of this gospel would spread from shore to shore… all over the inhabited earth

2. At the time, anyone hearing it would have thought it preposterous

3. But His power through the Holy Spirit has made it happen

No geographical nation on earth without a New Testament Church

1.  couldn’t have said that even twenty years ago

2.  God has broken through in Mongolia, Albania, and various closed Muslim nations

3.  The fall of the Soviet bloc has opened access to countless hidden people groups

Unreached people groups

1.  1950  estimated 24,000 unreached peoples

2.  1980 estimated 17,000 unreached peoples

3.  1992 estimated 11,000

4.  1996 estimates put it around 9,000… almost half what it was in 1980 when I started praying for them

5.  Today:  JoshuaProject.net puts the number at 6,644

5.  MANY local churches have adopted unreached peoples and have prayed for them until there were local churches planted in their midst!!

D.  Various amazing statistics:  TO GOD’S GLORY

1.  3500 new churches opening worldwide every week

2.  28,000 additional Christians in People’s Republic of China every day.  In 1950 when China was closed to foreign missionaries, cons. estimates at 1 million Chinese Christians; now conservative estimates at 40-50 million

3.  20,000 new Christians in Africa every day; in 1990, 3% of continent was Christian; now over 40%

4.  In Muslim Indonesia, the number of Christians is so high the government has stopped printing the statistic…  estimates place it at around 25%!!

6.  In Iran, more Muslims have come to faith in Christ since 1980 than in the previous 1000 years combined!!

7.  In Russia, after 70 years of oppression, Christians number at least 100 million- five times the number in the Communist parts and 36% of the total population

8.  In A.D. 100, 360 non-Christians for every believer; now the estimate is 7 non-Christians for every evangelical believer

9.  In A.D. 100, estimated 12 unreached people groups per church congregation; in 1991, with 5 million congregations worldwide, there are at least 500 congregations for every unreached people group!

Christ prophesied accurately when He said, “This gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”

We’re seeing the greatest fulfillment of that prophecy in history right before our eyes!!

NOT YET:  The Work Still to Do:

A.  The newly opened nations still have a very small and weak witness

B.  There are still 6644 unreached people groups

C.  There is much degeneration of the church in previously strong areas… look at America… many of our own people hardly know anything about Jesus Christ

D.  There are still almost 4 billion people who have never heard the name of Jesus Christ

The “10-40 Window”… Muslim nations, India, China

V. Applications

A. Rejoice in the Sovereignty of Christ:  to Make this Prediction and to See that it Comes True

1. Understand that the Holy Spirit has power over people’s hearts to COMPEL them to obey

2. Ascribe to the Triune God the glory of the completion of most of this work!

3. Worship Him for how far it’s gotten!

4. Don’t celebrate human will, human spirit, human commitment, human sacrifice… anywhere near as much as you celebrate the sovereign power of the Spirit to MAKE it happen

B. Be Confident in the Final Outcome

1. We are not fighting a losing battle… but a winning one!!

2. The elect from every nation will hear the gospel and be saved

3. Many non-elect from every people group on earth will hear the gospel as a testimony according to the will of God

4. We are not on a fool’s errand… we are the fulfillment of a promise made by our Sovereign Lord

C. Pray Confidently for MORE LABORERS for this vast harvest

Matthew 9:36-38  When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.  ³⁷ Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.  ³⁸ Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

1. More unbelievers are alive today than any other time in history

2. The response of Christians to their plight is still immensely beneath what it should be

3. Ask God to raise up more and more laborers for this harvest field

D. Draw Near to God Daily

1. First step:  ask God to draw you close to Him… to enflame your heart with His love

2. Second step:  ask God to give you a heart compulsion… an overriding passion for an unreached people group… get one from JoshuaProject.net and pray for them daily for the rest of 2010

E. Be Earnest Not to be Left Out

1. Christ will most certainly fulfill this promise

2. The question is… will you be involved or not?

3. There is no promise in the Bible that you personally will not be left out

4. Many Christians live lives far beneath what God would have them do

5. Beg, plead, beseech the Lord not to leave you out of what He’s doing to advance the gospel to the ends of the earth

F. Pray for FBC to be a Launching Pad for Missions

1. We have sent out some… let’s send out MANY