International Sunday | Pastor Joel Wolfe | May 25th 2025

So when we do missions around here, we don't just

do it inside in the big people room. We do

it back in the back. So as you kids come up,

these kids right here, they have all worked very hard

to raise money for care Net so helping with crisis pregnancy,

and they filled bottles. Come on all the way over,

all the way over, They filled bottles up and they

have brought in this morning just under five hundred dollars

of money for the crisis pregnancy. Let's all of you

step forward and put your bottles along the front edge

of the stage. Okay, and then you guys can go

back to your class. Hallelujah. Our kids are involved in missions.

Go this way right there there you go, Oh they

went halfway. Well, well, you know, the children just do

what they want to do around here. So we've got

bottles full of money and thought that money is going

to be going straight to care Net and helping them

continue with ultrasounds and all the things that they do.

So our kids, we always want our kids to be thinking.

They've been having stories back there about all the different missionaries.

They've been talking about missions and what a missionary is

and praying over them that someday maybe one of them

would be a missionary. What do you think, moms and dads? Hallelujah?

All right, I just want to take a moment right

now and just thank you so much for being a

missions church. Over the last twelve months, our mission well,

our missions cycle runs from June to June, and over

the last twelve months, you folks, you generous folks, have

been giving, have given over ninety five thousand dollars for missions.

We are so close to one hundred grand I think

it's just I am so so so blessed to be

able to just say that our church is a missions

oriented church and we're going to continue that into this

coming year. I just you know, if you came, I

don't know why you came today. Maybe you came today

because you knew it was International Sunday and it's the

best Sunday of the year. But maybe you came because

you wanted to get closer to God. And I've said

this every Sunday through our series. Maybe you're sitting here

because you want to be closer to God. And I

would say once again, just know that the closer you

get to God's heart, You're going to start hear it

beating and as you hear it beating, it's going to

be beating for souls and for the nation and for

the lost. So as you get yourself closer to God,

you are going to start hearing this now, I said

a couple of weeks ago, And I always need to

have a good science fun fact for each of you,

because I am just kind of a nerd that way.

But if you were to take a little cell from

your heart, a cardiac cell, and if you were to

put it in a Petri dish and it would live

for a little while, you would see if you look

through a microscope that it would be beating in its

own intrinsic beat. Every one of your heart cells has

its own intrinsic beat. And then if you were to

take a heart sell from somebody else and put it

in the same Petri dish, they would have two very

different beats. But the closer that you get them together,

then they sink up and they start beating together. And

I would say to you New Horizon that the closer

you get to the beating heart of Jesus Christ, the

closer you're gonna get to him, the more you are

gonna be drawn to his heart. And you are gonna

sink up and we will beat with the same heart

as our heavenly Father. Amen. And that is our goal.

That is what Missions Month is about. It's about bringing

the heart of the Father to you so that you

would know this, so that you would understand. Now, humans

have a great need for governmental institutions. I don't know why.

It's just kind of how God made us, and when

we come to when we're people, and we come together

as families, and then families coalesce together as tribes, and

then tribes coalesce together as nations, and then you get

this governmental sort of grouping of different groups of people

in different areas around the world, and those groups of

people become what's known as nations. And nations are mentioned

in the Bible, believe it or not, just under five

hundred times the word nation or nations. Nations and nations

are in God's plan. God's plan is for the nations.

God has an ultimate plan for the nations. They aren't

just something that's there. They are spoken of constantly in

the Bible, and they need to be close in our

own hearts. The nations show the creator activity of God

and what you're gonna find when you walk around this room,

You're gonna find different foods. You're gonna find different colors

of skin, You're gonna find different languages, different color of eyes,

different hair, You're gonna find different ways of doing things,

different cultures. You're gonna find different Why didn't God just

make cookie cutter human beings just like this and then

make us all love him and then at the end

of all of it, we would just all be fine

and go to heaven. That's not how He's done it,

not at all. Instead, He's made every single one of

us ever so different. Every nation is so different and

so unique and so fun and so incredible, and we

all have this opportunity to come to him. It's God's

heart that we would come to him, because he absolutely

loves us. I'm gonna open up my Bible to Acts

chapter seventeen, and they're gonna put this up on the

on the screens, and I'm going to do this in

the NIV. Make sure I get it right. Acts chapter seventeen.

This is Paul talking to a bunch of people in Athens.

He was a missionary himself. Everybody say, amenda that from

one man he made all the nations that they should

inhabit the whole earth, and he marked out for their

appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.

God put nations in specific times in history. There have

been nations that no longer exist, but those nations were

so important to build the next nation and then to

bring forth new things into the world and into onto

the earth. Nations have had their appropriate times. The United

States has its appointed time in history. Every nation around

here has its appointed time, and what is supposed to

happen during its appointed time the next verse. God did

this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach

out for him and find him, though he is not

far from any one of us, for in Him we

live and we move, and we have our being. I

would say to you, people of God, that any group

of people that does not find themselves in Christ is

not in their best life. I don't know about you,

but sometimes when I'm following Jesus real close, and my

heart is beating just like him, and I'm listening to him,

and I'm doing what he says to do, and i

am obeying his ways and his direction in life, you

know things, I'm kind of my best self at that point.

I love better. I listen better. I'm more peaceful, I

live a better life. But when I'm separated from him,

I am not my best self. How many of you

have ever not been your best self? Y'all know? Oh boy,

how's Frankie been these days? That's what I want to know, Angie,

just kidding. We all know what it means to not

be our best selves, but we know that when we

find Him, we do become our best selves. And God

is calling the nations out of their brokenness, out of

their fear and their folly, and their foolishness, and their

their poverty and their brokenness, and calling the nations to Him.

And when the nations come to Him, he changes them

into their best way of being. Open up Isaiah, let's

go to Isaiah. And I want you to go to

Isaiah too. I was laughing with first service. You know,

we used to say open up your Bibles, and you'd

hear all these papers swishing back and forth, and people

would be licking their finger and going like this and

finding the table. Now it's not so much. So just

turn on your Bible, push the app and go to Isaiah.

And we're gonna do this one in the Passion translation.

Look at that bada bing. I got a whole nother

Bible up here in this little tiny box. How many

Bibles do I have in here? Different translations. I'm amazed

at it. I don't know if you are. Okay, So

Isaiah chapter two, this is some of God's promises. What

I'm going to read to you for the nations. This

is God's plan. This is where we're And I wanted

to build faith in your soul because sometimes we look

around the world and we just are thinking everything's going

to hell, and I am basket. Anybody ever wonder about

that in your own little heart and mind. Well, God's

got a better plan. He's got the best plan. Let's listen, okay.

In the last days, the mountain of Yahweh's temple will

be raised up as the head of the mountains, towering

over all the hills. A sparkling stream of every nation

will flow into it. Many peoples will come and say, everyone, come,

let's go up higher to Yahweh's mountain, to the house

of Jacob's God. Then he can teach us his ways

and we can walk in his paths. Zion will be

the center of instruction, and the word of Yahweh will

go out from Jerusalem. He will judge fairly between the

nations and settle disputes among many peoples. They will beat

their swords they used against each other into plowshares, and

their spears into pruning hooks. No nation will take up

weapons against another, nor will they prepare for war no more, Oh,

House of Jacob, Come let us walk in the wonderful

light of Yahweh.

Oh.

Doesn't that just move you with hope for the nations?

That song we sang? He gives us hope for the nations,

for the peoples of the world. I want to take

just a moment and kind of go through them, just

to these verses in the last days the mountain of Yahweh.

Mountains quite often refer to kingdoms or governments. So God

is saying, out of all the governments, he is making

his government his mountain, and to rise above all the others. Now,

remember two thousand years ago Christianity started with is one man.

Now we have two point eight billion of us walking

the face of the earth. I think the mountain of

the Lord has grown just a little bit, wouldn't you say?

Christianity is growing in Iran and in China at the

fastest rate ever seen before. Those two nations are By

two thousand and twenty, they will be considered Christian nations.

There are more Christians in China right now than the

Communist Party has on their roles. Come on, people, the

mountain of the Lord is increasing and increasing. This is

not a time to be downcast, Oh my soul, Now

is the time to look up. Now is the time

to see the word of the Lord coming to pass.

It will be raised up as the head of the mountains,

towering over all the hills. A sparkling stream of every

nation will flow into it. Isn't that an interesting way

to put it? Doctor Brian Simmons interpreted the Hebrew of

that verse, saying, a sparkling stream of nations will flow

into it. The word river in the Hebrew can also

be interpreted streams, cheerful, sparkling, all sorts of just beautiful, happy,

radiant words. And if you're going to flow into the

highest mountain, wait a minute, that's going to require it

to flow up. That's not natural. The natural flow of

nations is to flow to its lowest common denominator, to

flow down into the depths of things and get lower

and lower and lower. But this verse here tells us

that there will be a sparkling stream of nations flowing

up into the House of God, up into this mighty

mountain of God. What he says is that this is

a supernatural magnetism bringing the nations into the Kingdom of God. Hallelujah,

because it's what he's doing. He is there's a flow

up against the natural, you know, the grain of things.

This is a reversal. Do you remember in the Book

of Genesis with the Tower of Babel, those people were

gathered together and they were disobeying God. And God came

down and he divided them into nations, and he divided

them into languages, and he said, go, you to go.

But this time when they were dispersed, they were dispersed

individually and broken up into pieces and disunified. But in

this verse, it's telling me there's gonna be a reversal

of that dispersion, and the nations are gonna stream together,

begin to gather together in a sparkling, radiant flow. This

is God's plan. Many peoples will come and say, everyone come,

let's go up higher to Yahwei's mountain. Everyone come. This

is what missionaries do. Missionaries gather people. They're out there

calling in the highways and the byways. Come with us.

Would you come with us to the higher mountain. It's

better there. You will be your better self when you

come there, Oh, people of God, even today I would

save and to you. Come with me to the mountain

of the Lord. Come with me, you will be your

better self. We are on. We are all gathering together,

letting go of the things in us that are not

the best. And we're joining with that sparkling stream. Oh America,

Oh America. I say, come to the mountain of Yahweh.

Come to the mountain of Yahweh. El Salvador, Come to

the mountain of Yahweh, all of the nations. You will

be your best self. As you do, many people will say, come, everyone, come,

let's go up higher. And then he can teach us

his ways and we can walk in his has. This

is the discipling of the nations that we are called

to do. All wisdom, all knowledge, all righteousness is in

the mountain of Yahweh. And as the nations come, they

will be schooled in good things. They will be schooled

in righteousness, they will be schooled in how to handle things.

They will learn how to walk in the paths of God.

Amen makes my heart so excited. Zion will be the

center of instruction, and the word of Yahweh will go

out from Jerusalem. He will judge fairly between the nations

and settle disputes among the peoples. We've watched over the

last couple of weeks a man brokering peace, and for that,

I am very grateful. We find ourselves in so many wars,

and so many people are dying, and so much bloodshed,

and so much violence, and so much breaking of families

and destruction, and oh, it grieves my heart. Between the

nations and so a man is attempting to broke her peace,

and I'm very grateful for it. But I keep thinking

in the back of my head, one wrong room and

you know, one wrong move, and it won't work. I mean,

how many times have we try to get Zelensky and

Putin to come together and then somebody does something dumb.

That's what happens when men broke her peace. And I

love it when they do. Your heart yearns for when

God brokers the peace, because then peace will be brokered

by love itself. Peace will be brokered by peace itself.

And it will come from God above. And there will

be a time when our nations no longer rage against God.

These are the promises of God. And no more war,

no more war. We don't have spears, we don't have swords.

We got ak forty sevens, we got tanks. God's promising

us that there will be a day where those things

will be melted down into things that are used for harvest, plowshares,

pruning hooks. There is a day, people of God. That

day will come when the mountain of the Lord becomes

the highest mountain. We as the Church stand in the gap.

We as a church stand between God's promises and the

world we find ourselves in. We as the people of God,

stand in this incredible spot. And it is our faith

and is our prayers, and it is our strength. Through God.

He has asked that we would be the ones that

would stand in the gap and pull the two together.

Oh people of God, pray for the nations. My heart

yearns for these promises. I would love all the people

that came today, the host table hosts, would you come

and line up right across. We're gonna do a little

different than we did for service. Go ahead and line

up all the way across. I don't care what order

you're in. Just come on up here. Lineup, we're gonna

do some praying. We got the band up here yet,

Oh the band. Here we go, you, my people of God,

we are gonna stand in the gap between God's promises

and what we have happening even now. So we've got

quite a few nations. Come on up here, Come on

up here, find your partners if you're doing them together

with somebody. And we got the band coming on up.

We're gonna sing a little bit. We're gonna have music

in the back of us. And you thought you came

to church just to sit back and watch. No, no, no, no,

You're a part of this here today. Will you pray

with me? Will you pray with me? This morning, when

we were singing a Hope's anthem, I started seeing peoples

of other nations, other ethnicities, broken and in the dirt.

They were literally sitting in the dirt cry with no hope.

And I could see that as we were singing that song,

as we were praying, as we were declaring things, God

was ripping the heavens apart and things. They began to

look up and they began to see Hope, and I

would say, even now, you know, we're sitting here in Fife,

little old Fife. Let's get some kingdom work done here

in Fife. Let's do this. So we're gonna pray over

these nations. Will you pray with me? I am gonna

give them an opportunity to speak in their own language,

declaration over their country. So some of them are gonna

speak in other languages. They're getting all arranged all on

their own here. Oh boy, howdy, do you're good? We'll

make it work. What was I saying? We're gonna declare,

We're gonna sing, will you will you lend your faith

to mine? So are you ready? We're gonna start down here.

We got Samoa and uh, this wonderful family. They're gonna

be right over here. They got some really yummy sweet stuff.

So the band's gonna start playing. We're gonna start playing

Hope's anthem back there, nice and strong, and we're gonna

bring some energy to this. And you're gonna pray. Now.

She prayed in Samoan, and she tried to tell us

she was no good at it, but you know what

I couldn't tell. So, girlfriend, you just go. I thought

you sounded pretty good. So maybe she was saying all

sorts of things. I don't know. So are you ready

let's lift up Samoa. Are you ready to pray for

the islands? Okay, so this is Samoa. Here we go.

Tama if butyava o ya eloa oho the the Father God.

We just thank you for your grace, your goodness, your

love through all the nations, Lord God, not to Samuel.

Lord.

I pray for my country, Lord God, that you will

be their God, that the veil from their eyes will

be removed, and they will know you as their true God.

That they will know Jesus of the Bible, not of religion,

and that they will break from generational curses of religion,

of poverty, of fear, of sagnation, of sicknesses and disease,

Lord God, that they will come to obedience and know you.

Father God.

You say that in your word to ask you to

send to send workers to the harvest, Father God. So

we just ask that you pick people from our country,

Lord God, that will bring you honor and glory in

every country, Father God. And we just ask that you

send them in other countries. Let their obedience begin a

domino effect in other countries as well, Lord God, that

our love for you, Father God will bring unity in

other countries along with ours. Father God, that we will

find you as common brown, that you will be glorified

in everything we do. Lour God in Jesus

Name, Amen, Amen,