A Church that Sends

Welcome to the Enduring Grace Sermons Podcast.

This is the home for the weekly teaching and ministry of Pastor Ben Hill.

Our mission is to share the timeless truth of God's Word with a world in need of hope.

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And now, here is this week's message.

If you have your Bibles, go ahead and make your way to Acts chapter 14.

Acts 14 · chapter mention

We'll be picking it up in verse 24 here in just a moment.

And as you make your way there, I want to ask you a simple question.

Now, this question might make you feel a little uncomfortable, or maybe it's a time of excitement at the thought of this question.

But if I gave you a notebook and I asked for you at the front of that notebook to begin writing down every name of the person or people that have received Jesus at the hands of you being faithful to proclaim the gospel, how many names would you get?

Would you get several pages in, being able to record all those that you have shared your faith with, that have responded to salvation?

Would you even be able to write a single name?

I think many of us, if we're really honest, probably would have a hard time putting down a single name this morning.

Because it's something we don't think about.

It's something that oftentimes we feel ill-equipped for.

Maybe we feel that it would not really serve any purpose.

That we'd mess it up so badly that God surely wouldn't use it.

You know, there was a lady named Linda that Richard Blackaby shares her story about her journey.

When she was 60 years old, she felt convicted that she needed to be a better sharer of the gospel.

And so you know what she did?

She signed up for evangelism class at her church.

Like any Christian would do.

They got in the class, she learns, and then she finds out that the next week is the final week of training, and you know what that means?

You have to go out and talk about Jesus.

Linda got sick to her stomach.

She started thinking of any way, any excuse possible that she could be out the next Sunday.

The pastor noticed that she was a little nervous, so he goes and puts his arm around her and says, Hey Linda, listen, I know this is new to you.

What I need from you, you're going to be my partner.

I need you to pray.

While we're sharing the gospel, you are to pray.

And if there's a possible interruption, this is what I want you to do.

I want you to cut off that interruption so that I can continue to share the gospel with the person I'm talking to.

Linda had immediate relief.

She was like, Oh, I am out of sharing the gospel.

I can pray and I can stop interruptions.

I'm great at that.

So she goes with the pastor, and they go to the home, and lo and behold, an interruption comes through the front door, a teenage daughter.

She goes, This is my opportunity.

I'm going to take her away from this room so that the pastor can continue sharing the faith with these wonderful couple.

She gets the teenager to the other room, and you know what happens?

She goes, I need to talk to her about Jesus.

That's why we're here.

And she just asked, Why is the why is a pastor in there talking to her parents?

I I gotta walk through it.

So she begins sharing what she remembered.

And in her own words, what she says is that she fumbled every step of every motive or a statement that she was supposed to make.

So she asked the wrong question.

She quoted the wrong verse.

She fumbled the gospel presentation.

But then she got to the end and she did this right.

She said to the young teenage girl simply this will you trust in Jesus?

You know what that girl said to her?

Yes.

Linda was taken back.

She looked at the girl and said, Are you sure?

I've messed it all up.

I didn't tell you the right verses.

I didn't ask you the right question.

Are you really sure?

She started trying to convince her not to.

And the girl insisted, Yes, yes, I need Jesus.

I've been looking for this my whole life.

Linda would go home and she would write that girl's name, the date, and the experience in a notebook.

And she put it back on her shelf.

Years later, Richard Blackaby had the opportunity to talk to her now in her 80s.

Remember, she was in her 60s when she began that process.

And as she was talking and sharing her life story, now not able to get out of the house like she used to.

She talked about how impactful that day was that she finally got to see God work through her.

And told Blackabee about a little notebook that had all the names of all those who responded to the gospel recorded in it.

So he asked for it.

He wanted to look at it.

He wanted to see the faithfulness that this lady had served the Lord faithfully in sharing the gospel and how many people had been changed.

He took that notebook and began going page after page, name after name.

She had over 3,100 gospel, not just conversations, but conversions that she got to witness through the faithfulness of telling others about Jesus.

She started at 60.

She understood her mission.

She understood her purpose.

She had been equipped with the truth and she wasn't going to look back.

She wasn't going to waste a day.

This morning, what I want to do is encourage you, church, to be ascending church, to be a church that is on the mission of seeing people transformed.

And what could it be for Georgetown if our church had a whole bunch of lindas that would just make it a priority to share the gospel?

How many gospel conversions, not just conversations, but we'd see that's what it means to pursue one more for the glory of Jesus Christ.

It is to see one more person receive Jesus one person at a time as we're faithful to proclaim the gospel truth.

That's what this morning's message is about.

That is what it means to be a faithful Christian, to be a testimony to others, to point them to Jesus.

So, church family, I want to encourage you if you have found your place in Acts chapter 14.

Acts 14 · chapter mention

We'll begin with verse 24 to say word.

It says, Then they passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia, and when they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Thalia.

And from there they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled.

And when they arrived and gathered the church together, they declared all that God had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles.

And they remained no little time with the disciples.

This morning we see the end of the first missionary journey in this text.

Just a reminder, this journey began back in Acts chapter 13, where they are gathered together as the church, and they're praying and fasting according to the text, and they lay hands on Paul and Barnabas for the work to which they were called, which was to take the gospel on a missionary journey.

Acts 13 · chapter mention

So God called them, equipped them, and sent them, and the church affirmed them after fasting and praying and laying on hands.

And then they go on this journey, and what we see is that they share the gospel in every city they come across, all across the region of Asia Minor.

In fact, we didn't look at this text, but Paul is stoned nearly to death in the midst of this missionary journey.

They thought he was dead, they throw him in the street outside the city, and he gets up and walks and continues on the missionary journey to the next city, where he continues to proclaim the gospel.

And having preached there, he then goes back through all the cities where they've been ran out of town, prays and ordains the elders of the churches, and our text tells us this morning in verse 24 that they passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia, and when they had spoken the word in Perga, they continued on to Attilia, and from there they sailed to Antioch.

But notice that the church in Antioch empowered them to go.

They were ascending church on their behalf.

They were ascending church, and that allowed them to reach new places.

It allowed them to reach new places.

Because if Antioch had been satisfied with just being where they were, and they were happy just continuing to be in the one location, the one church in Antioch, then they would not have prayerfully sent Paul and Barnabas on the missionary journey.

They would have not been able to take the gospel to unreached people.

Thank the Lord for our missionaries that are willing to go all across the world to take the gospel to unreached peoples.

Thank the Lord for our own faithful members that have been sent on our behalf to take the gospel to other lands, other states, other cities.

We should celebrate that God has used First Baptist Church, Georgetown, over the many, many years of the faithful ministry of this church.

We've been known as a planting church.

Many churches have been planted through First Baptist and the ministry here.

In many ways.

We are like Antioch in that regard.

That we have been good at sending churches out, people in our midst out for the ministry work for the purpose of reaching those we would not reach otherwise.

But here's the reality is that oftentimes we focus so heavily on the unreached people groups of the world, we forget that there's unreached people in our backyard.

When we leave this place, when we leave the building of the church, by the way, you make up the church.

There's no church without you, there's just a building.

But you're the hands and the feet of the church.

When you leave this place, you represent Christ and you represent your church.

And God has called you to the mission field that is right outside these doors.

When we gather together, it's for the equipping of the saints, for the encouragement of the brothers and sisters, so that they can be faithful in the ministry that God has called you to outside these walls.

Because there are unreached people in our community.

There's unreached people that is your neighbor.

There's unreached people in your jobs.

There's unreached people in your families.

And we are to take the gospel message to those people.

To be ascending church, we don't only focus on the unreached people groups of the world, we focus on the unreached people groups in our own backyard.

For us to be faithful, we have to reach our community for Christ.

And we have to send people abroad.

That's what it means to be a church who reaches the unreached.

It's kind of like a post office that was closed in a small town in a rural America.

It is said that when they closed their small distribution center because there wasn't enough people to take the mail there, it became a problem in that community.

It was 45 minutes away from the closest mail distribution center.

And in this day and age, 45 minutes was an eternity for this people.

Everything was just a few minutes down the road.

And they found that there was no one willing to take the mail there.

So those people either had to come all the way, 45 minutes, to that new distribution center that they were going to need to use, or they wouldn't get their mail.

Too often we expect people from the outside world who are lost and don't know any better to come to us, which is a distribution center for the gospel.

Rather than us being ascending church that takes it out into the community to distribute the good news that there is a Savior who has died and paid the ultimate price for their sins and that there is hope in Christ, in Christ alone.

We need to be ascending church.

But not only does ascending church reach new people, ascending church releases faithful people.

We release faithful people from ministry.

Think about the church at Antioch.

If they had simply said, Paul and Barnabas, you're our best leaders we've got.

We cannot have you go anywhere, so you've got to stay here.

The gospel would not have been taken to these unreached people.

Oftentimes it costs the church quite a deal to send people on mission.

Look at verse 26.

It says, and from there they sailed to Antioch, which is their hometown that they were sent from, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled.

Did you notice they were commended?

That word is really to be understood as entrusted with.

They were entrusted with the grace of God for the purpose of sharing it with others.

Did you know God has entrusted you with the good news if you're a child of God?

If you have believed and trusted in Christ, He has entrusted you with the hope of the world so that you can take it to your neighbor, to the person at the grocery store, to the waiter or waitress at your restaurant of choice.

That you have been entrusted with the good news to be able to share it wherever you go.

If you remember back to verse 24, what he said was that as it they were going from city to city, they were proclaiming the word.

They were testifying.

If you think back to the Great Commission, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them all that I have taught you.

Go therefore and make disciples.

We've been entrusted with the gospel, and that we have been told as we live our lives, we are to testify.

That's what Linda understood.

She understood that she was now entrusted with the good news in a way that it was God who saved people.

She was only the person that needed to testify of the good news that Christ is enough.

And that Christ will overcome anything, any obstacle that might hinder them from understanding.

We have been commended, entrusted with the good news of the gospel, which means that there are some in this room this very day that might be called one day to be a missionary to a foreign land.

And we need to be praying that God would call them, confirm their calling, equip them, and allow us the honor of sending them.

There are others in this room that the Lord has laid on their heart that they need to be a church planter.

And we need to empower them to be able to plant a church for the glory of God.

There's others in this room that have been called to parachurch ministries.

Like think of our own Matt Moore and Ryan Marsh with FCA.

And we support them, we empower them, we pray for them that they would be effective in the ministry because they're on a mission field.

We've all been called to serve God faithfully, but there are some that are uniquely called for the purpose of proclaiming and taking the gospel to new places, new regions, so that they can share the gospel and people can be saved.

We should support that effort.

Don't miss the process that God has laid out in Acts for the church.

You have a church in Antioch who are worshiping, praying, fasting together, and the Lord lays on their heart that Paul and Barnabas have been set apart for the purpose of ministry of planting churches as missionaries across the region.

God called them.

The church sends them.

And then God completes a work through them.

God is at the center of all of it.

Too often churches get too territorial, and what ends up happening is they don't celebrate what God is doing in planting churches.

I can think about hearing from just conversations in hallways with other pastors where pastors have said, yeah, we had a new church plant go in a few miles from our church, and we have seen some of our members go over there and we miss them, and it's hard.

We don't really like it.

The church is growing, it's impacting, it's Bible-believing, it's faithful.

If those are true, then you should be celebrating because they're being sent over there for the purpose of being used for God's glory.

To be church mission-minded is not to grow all of the talent in one pool, to pull every resource into one building, to build a church, to be a mega church.

Nothing against mega churches, but that is not the goal.

The goal is to plant and send people for ministry so the gospel can multiply.

The fastest growing churches are churches that have been planted since 2000.

Those are the fastest growing churches.

If you want a church to grow, you plant a church.

We want the gospel to grow.

We need to be about planting churches.

We need to be a church that is excited about it.

But here's the beauty of it.

As we plant churches, God sees a faithful church, and a faithful church gets to experience the blessing of God in renewed ways.

We get to experience what it means to be faithful.

Enioch understood what we often tend to forget that we do not measure faithfulness by how many people we keep.

We measure faithfulness by whether we obey the mission Jesus has given us.

That's the definition of success in God's eyes.

The definition of success is are we being faithful to send and equip the saints for the ministry?

To be faithful, we've got to be a sending church.

To be faithful, We cannot be like the farmer who hoarded all of his seed in the barn.

There was a farmer who had a neighbor, and he asked his farmer buddy, Hey, you've got millions of seeds in your barn.

What do you do with all those seeds?

He said, I keep them for a rainy day.

I never know when I'll need them.

The farmer looked at him, baffled, and said, But what good is it just sitting in your barn?

He said, Well, I know that I have seed if I ever need it.

He said, Wouldn't it be more beneficial to throw the seed out to reap the harvest so that you can have even more?

We are to cast seed and allow God to do the work of the harvest.

And I can promise you as a church that when we cast the seed of the gospel, it does not return void because God is the Lord of the harvest and it's his gospel and his purpose and he will be glorified.

You can rest assured that we don't have to harbor all the seeds in this room.

We are the seed to be cast out.

When we leave this place into Georgetown, South Carolina, to Pauli's, to Andrews, Mount Pleasant, even.

Because many of you reside in all those places.

Where you live is the field that you are to sow in.

Are you sowing the gospel to your neighbor?

Are you testifying of the goodness?

Linda wasn't sent to a foreign country.

She was sent to a living room.

And she was faithful there, and she got to see God move miraculously.

What would it look like if we were to take sharing the gospel seriously?

How would our world change?

How would our community change?

Ascending church does not lose people.

Ascending church invests in people, and God gives back more than we ever send out.

That's the beauty of God's design.

It doesn't make sense.

The more you send, the more you receive, but that's the way God works.

Let us be faithful in asking God and praying and simply asking the Lord something along these lines consistently as a church.

Lord, raise up pastors from among us, raise up missionaries from among us, raise up church planters from among us, and Lord, give us the courage and the faith to send them when you call.

May that be our heart's desire.

To be ascending church.

Because ascending church reaches new places, ascending church releases people from ministry, and also ascending church rejoices in God's work.

Don't miss this part of Acts chapter 14, verse 27.

Acts 14:27

And when they arrived and gathered the church together, so Paul Barnabas, they've been on a missionary journey.

It's been long.

The first thing that they could have done is go, man, I need rest.

No, when they arrived, they gathered the church.

They gathered them together.

For what reason?

Look at what it says.

They declared all that God had done with them.

Now notice something.

The focus is on God, not them.

You know, oftentimes when we start talking about our testimony, we usually focus on ourselves.

You know, I was going down the road and I was thinking about this particular event in my life, and it was like I heard God speak to my soul.

And I knew then that I could only go this direction.

You notice how many times I said I.

True testimony is talking about the glorification of God rather than the deeds of man.

The focus is on the work that God is doing rather than the work that people are doing.

God uses people for his purpose and his glory, and we should never ever try to step in the way of what God needs glory of.

It is to glorify God.

Our lives is to glorify God in all things.

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

God gets glory.

They declared what God had done through them and how God had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles.

Here's the wonderful truth of Scripture.

God opens doors and he closes doors.

And the doors that God opens, no man can shut, and the doors that God closes, no man can open.

Are you wasting your time focused on the wrong things?

And has God closed that door off for you?

Because he's got a better door in your life that he's desperately wanting to open for you.

The fact was that the Jews, by and large, there were some saved, but most of them were the ones causing the trouble for Paul and Barnabas on this first missionary journey.

In fact, the Jews followed them from city to city, causing and stirring up trouble in each city, which is the reason why ultimately Paul gets stoned to death nearly.

And the Jews were the people that were supposed to be the chosen people of God.

Should know better.

But they rejected the truth.

And yet the Gentiles received the truth.

They were saved.

Paul and them celebrate the work of what God had done with the church.

We need to be a church that prioritizes rejoicing in the mission and the ministry work that God is having us do.

Which is the reason why this summer you're going to see something a little different with our little flow in service.

I hinted at this, I think, a couple of weeks ago, but this summer we're going to start it.

And that is that it's an intimate part of our worship to celebrate what God is doing.

So we're going to have a special time at the end of our services when we have things to celebrate for missions, or we need to call to prayer for ministry and missions.

It is going to fit at the end because it's celebration and missions time.

It is a biblical practice and it cannot be something that we look at as, oh man, this is keeping me from lunch.

It can't be one of those things that we go, you know, this is good.

That's great.

Okay, what did I leave the oven on when I left the house?

It needs to have the intention and it needs to lead us to worshiping the Lord, celebrating what God is doing.

Which is the reason why it needs to be an intimate part of our worship, not just something we throw in.

And I'm excited about it because we're going to have a time this very morning at the end of the invitation that we're about to be in, to celebrate the faithfulness of our church.

To celebrate what God is doing through First Baptist Georgetown to change the world for his glory and praise.

Church family.

A church that reaches new places.

A church willing to send missionaries from us even when it hurts.

But also we've been called to glorify God in worship and to celebrate the handy work of God through his ministry, through his saints, through you and I.

But it begins with salvation.

If we do not have a personal relationship with Jesus, you can't share the gospel effectively.

You can't glorify the Lord God with your life truly because you have to have a relationship with Jesus to be on the mission field.

Do you have that personal relationship?

Have you truly trusted in Christ alone for your salvation?

Or are you simply sitting on the sidelines of church, enjoying, listening to the things of God without really knowing him personally?

This morning I want to encourage you to respond in saving faith, and it is simply by confessing your sins and trusting in Christ alone to save you.

No amount of works, no matter how good you are, can save you.

It is only through the blood of Jesus Christ that we can be saved.

Will you accept the joy of salvation today?

And church family, during this time of invitation, I want to ask you to take on the challenge Linda did.

To be a faithful soul winner by just simply being faithful to testify of God's goodness to others.

With every head bowed and eye closed this morning.