Mission in Java - the Java Project

Hey everyone, this is Josh from Encounter Church Henley and thanks so much for tuning

into our podcast.

Our prayer is that through this podcast you can have an encounter with Jesus that will

change your life.

And now get ready for an inspiring message from our preaching team.

So it really is good to be at Henley.

I was just walking here and saw the banner on the side of the road and I thought, yeah,

praise God, this is awesome.

You guys are breaking ground here.

And I was chatting to Bob earlier about Grainge and the history of Grainge and the hospitality

they're showing at Henley.

The kingdom of God just keeps growing.

God is up to something in Henley and in Grainge and he's ordained you guys to be a part of

it.

There's incredible leaders in Tim, Tex and Ash and Cara and the rest of the team.

It's fantastic stuff.

It's good.

It's good, Ash.

It's good.

Okay.

Let me pray and then I'll stop babbling and start preaching.

Jesus, we're thankful for you.

Who are we without you?

What have we got without you?

Nothing.

We throw ourselves on your mercy and we're so thankful for your joy and the way you pour

yourself out for us.

So this afternoon God may have been not my words, but yours.

May you be lifting people up, impacting, changing lives in Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right.

When I read a passage like we just heard in the teaching text today, it reminds me that

sometimes I will, probably not you guys, probably just me.

Sometimes I'll read something in the Bible and I've read the Bible a few times by this

point as you'd hope.

And I'll get, I'll get to a part and I'll be like, Oh yeah, absolutely.

But I won't really think about it.

And then I'll just stop and read it again and be like, that's not true.

I'm just owning it.

I'll read stuff and be like, that's not true.

Let me just read that again.

Blessed are you who are poor for yours as the kingdom of God.

How much, I don't know how many of you have experienced poverty in your life and whether

you were like, man, what a blessed time.

I'm a uni student.

I have no job.

I am subsiding purely on ramen noodles.

Someone is gifting me because I can't afford them myself.

How blessed am I?

Now that doesn't mean God's wrong.

It means I read them and I go that, that can't be right.

Come on.

Yeah, I'm not the only person who does this.

I know.

But this is what Jesus says.

Blessed are you who are poor.

Blessed are you who weep.

Blessed are you who hunger.

Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject

your name as evil because of the Son of Man.

It's hard to read those like seriously read them and go, yes, I'm a blessed man.

Yeah, they're there.

The words of Jesus challenging us.

And if we take Jesus seriously, we have to take those words seriously.

So we're in a brand new series here at Henley, Mission in Motion.

I'm excited for this because God has a mission for His church, amen.

And it's designed to be active, not static, which means we go about it.

It's a call to every person who follows Jesus and it's not only active, it's pervasive.

So it's to be involved in every part of your lives.

You don't get to go, I'm on mission here, but not over here.

That's not how it works.

Every part of your life, when you're at work, when you're at uni, when you're at school,

when you're at home, when you're with family, when you're with friends, when you're with

complete strangers, when you're with neighbors, you are on mission.

That's how it works.

And over the next four weeks, you're going to hear from a range of people about that.

So I don't want to over explain it, but today, the basic thing I want to share with you is

this.

God loves the poor.

God loves the poor in spirit and He calls you to be a part of blessing their lives.

So a little bit of info here about Encounter's mission strategy as a church.

Again, I won't talk about what mission is.

I'm going to leave that for the good preachers still to come.

But how do we actually do missions?

How do we do it here at church?

So start with, Encounter is Tex and Cara.

So helpfully explained before, there's this rule of thumb called tithing for Christians.

If you're not familiar with it, that's all right.

But the basic rule of thumb, and this is a rule of thumb, not a rule, is that Christians

give a tenth to their local church.

The word tithe literally means a tenth.

If you want to know more about that, it's on our podcast at Prospect.

I preached about it a couple of weeks ago.

Look it up on YouTube or a podcast when you got some time.

But Encounter at Prospect and at Henley, we then turn around and give 10% of our finance

back out.

So we receive a tithe from the people who are a part of our church, and we then send

a tithe back out into the wider church.

So to be clear, that 10% is not exclusively for poor people, it is for missions.

How do we look at missions?

This is how we look at missions.

Through the lens of Acts chapter one, verse eight, which is Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria,

and the ends of the earth.

So this is what Jesus says, but you will receive, I know it's Acts, but this is Jesus, sneaky

little bit before he ascends to heaven.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses

in Jerusalem and in Judea and in Samaria and all the ends of the earth.

Here's where this is helpful.

These represent basically local mission, regional mission, mission to the poor and global mission.

You with me so far?

All right, I'll explain it a bit.

That was underwhelming, but I'll just keep explaining.

In Jerusalem, so their local spaces Encounter does things like we give to specific personal

needs sometimes we give to local domestic violence shelters.

Sometimes we partners with streetlight ministry who work with street kids down south and out

north.

So they're a strategic partner we work with.

So that's all local ministry in the ground nearby to us.

So their places we can go and visit any day we want.

In Judea, that's regional spaces.

So we'll often give to other church plants.

It doesn't have to be an essay.

It could be nationally.

We'll give to other mission organizations.

We love to give to one off things like bushfire appeals.

We want to have money handy ready so that when somebody says actually something awful

has happened, we go great.

We've got some money we can bless with straight away.

We don't have to come around rattling a tin in front of you.

But because you have generously given, we have money prepared in advance to hand back

out.

So we're trying to strategically think about that.

So that's Judea.

In Samaria, Samaria is the place where you think of where it's people that are like us,

but just different enough to cause us a bit of discomfort.

So those are spaces where we minister to the marginalized.

So we support spaces like Steve, I's homeless ministry at Enfield or the Congress church,

the indigenous church at Unedada, who we just bought a bunch of chairs for their church.

And at the end of the earth, where the ends of the earth is kind of self explanatory.

The ends of the earth is the ends of the earth.

It's global mission.

And there we primarily aim to support Indonesia and specifically we aim to support Java.

Okay, now obviously we could support ministries in a whole bunch of different countries.

It's not like we look at Indonesia and go better support there.

Africa has no more needs.

They're good now.

No, no, of course not.

But here's the thing.

There's like 30, 30 odd people in the room.

If all 30 of you went, there's something I want to do in a little way for 30 different

places.

That's good.

But if 30 of us combined together and focus our prayer, our resources, our passion, our

thinking into one place, we can have a bigger impact.

So that's why we support Java.

It's prayer giving relationship, maximizing our impact in spiritual, economic and relational

ways.

We call this the Java project because it's mostly focused on impacting the island of

Java, where the largest portion of population is.

All right, stick into it.

Why Indonesia?

I'm going to talk a bit about the Java project now.

And then I'm going to kind of get back to closing off the message part of it.

There's a number of practical reasons we support Indonesia specifically.

Number one, size.

Indonesia is country of around 281 million people.

So it's more than 10 times the size of Australia, which means there's great, great need.

And our contributions even maximize together as Henley and prospect, all focusing in on

the one island, not even all of Indonesia.

It's a drop in the bucket, right?

But it's a bigger drop than if we weren't focusing at all together.

The second is the amount of believers in Jesus.

So this is a spiritual impact.

Only 34 million people claim to believe in Jesus.

That's a lot.

That's a lot more than here.

But that means there is a 250 million person mission field.

That's worth some effort.

And the Jesus that we understand and believe in means that's 250 million people who lack

the eternal hope that Jesus brings.

Amen.

That's a big need.

The third thing is relative closeness.

Indonesia's 4,500 K's away, which in Australian terms is like a next door neighbor, right?

This is the next cattle station.

It's about a six hour flight from Adelaide to Jakarta and from Darwin to Bali.

It's like an hour and a half.

Like it's really, it's really not very far.

And so that's one of the reasons it is relational.

And this map should give you a bit of a sense of how close it is.

You know, Australia is just this massive, like we are the ends of the earth.

So when we talk about going to the ends of the world, we're already here, so we got to

go somewhere else.

And so when you look at our nearest neighbors, you see Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste and

Indonesia, that's what's right there above us.

And so that's one of the reasons we go there.

Next slide just gives you a bit of an impact.

Number four is the relative poverty of Indonesia.

Just under 10% people live below the poverty line.

3% of them live on less than $2.15 a day.

One in 25 kids in Indonesia under the age of five doesn't make it past their fifth birthday.

So if there's 100 kids in a room and they're four years old, four of them aren't going

to make it past five.

One in six children in Indonesia is underweight.

One in four children in Indonesia has stunted growth.

Globally, 57 million children don't attend school and 400 million children live under

that $2.15 a day poverty line.

That is unacceptable.

Unacceptable.

It's bad enough that we need to do something.

You know, Jesus consistently again and again says, let the little children come to me.

You got to become like a child.

If you want to understand me, be more like a kid.

Why?

They're rich in faith.

They're rich in love.

They trust.

This is who you need to be like.

So if we want to bless Jesus, we bless the vulnerable, we bless the children.

I'll leave that one there, but you can talk to me about it later.

Number five is the amount of persecution.

Conservative Islam is a huge form of persecution for believers in Indonesia.

Now I want to be very careful there that the phrase there is conservative Islam, not radical

Islam.

Radical Islam is presuming that everyone is under terrorist threat at all times.

There's two spaces in Indonesia that are under constant terrorist threat.

That is the far northern end of Sumatra in an era called Aceh, which you might have

heard of because that's where the tsunami hit.

That is, that's a very dangerous place.

And throughout some of the western reaches of Sumatra, the same island is also a very

dangerous place.

So in the north and in the west of Sumatra, Sharia law is in place, which means it's illegal

to be a Christian, which means it's legal to kill and persecute Christians.

Two years ago, there was a church attack three years ago, sorry, in Makassar.

There was a bombing at a church and very no repercussion because of that.

And when Christians enter power, they undergo tremendous persecution.

So the governor of Jakarta in 2017, Jakarta's capital city is a Christian and he was quite

public about his faith, but of course very, very careful and both Christian caring towards

Islam and also politically caring, thoughtful towards Islam.

But as soon as he slipped up in any way, shape or form, it's not that they didn't vote him

back into office, they threw him in jail.

So that's the level of persecution that happens in Indonesia.

It is an unjust political system marked by corruption and markedly driven by conservative

Islam that persecutes other places.

And again, I want to be really clear here, in other places, for example, in India, the

Hindu population persecutes Muslims.

So it's not, I'm not trying to have a dig at Muslims for their own sake, but in Indonesia,

there's the situation.

Number six, in Indonesia, there are organisations we can partner with on the ground.

The reason this is important is because well-meaning Christians for generations have stuffed up

in overseas missions.

So there's this famous story of a Canadian church that went over to, I think it was Kenya

and they built this beautiful school.

They paid for themselves, they built to themselves so much time, effort, money.

And a couple of years later, some more missionaries came across and the Kenyan tribe said, oh,

you have to come see this school.

It's amazing.

And so they took them up to it and showed them and they walked around the school.

And then as they stood in front of it, the missionaries said, can we go inside?

And the tribe said, no, no, this is our most beautiful building.

No one steps foot in this building.

So, oh, so we built this school and nobody goes in it because we didn't actually ask

what do these people need?

We just came and said, this is what we can do.

We'll do the work so we can't employ you so we don't lift you out of poverty.

There's a number of problems with that.

So by partnering with open doors and compassion, we minimise the Western mistakes we can make

in missions.

Does that make sense?

All right, I'll kick it on.

Why open doors?

Really briefly, open doors is an organisation devoted to supporting the persecuted church

through native leadership.

That means on the ground leadership in these countries across the globe.

We partnered with them for more than six years in Indonesia.

Last year we donated more than $6,500 to them to projects that include discipleship seminars

for Muslim background believers because if you come from an Islamic background, you're

kicked out of your family.

So there's a discipleship seminar, series of seminars that helps create them in a sense

of community and equips them to share the gospel with their community.

And it's theological and pastoral education to equip pastors to lead their people effectively

in Indonesia and there's persecution preparation training, teaching church and volunteer leaders

how to respond biblically to persecution.

So we partnered with open doors because that is us as encounter standing with the global

church in the middle of their persecution.

We refuse to turn a blind eye to the pain of the global church.

So why compassion?

Well, compassion, every year at Encounter we highlight their work.

Usually we call it Compassion Sunday.

Here today you've got me, but you also got Hannah.

Everybody say hi to Hannah.

Hannah's here from Prospect with us as well.

Hannah's also our admin officer on staff.

So if you send an email to Hello or admin at Encounter out of late or you've probably

got like six email addresses that feed in there Hannah, you're talking to Hannah.

And so always say hello to her.

If you're wondering what makes their weekly email so spicy when you get it, it's Hannah.

Loves an emoji.

Every year at Encounter we help highlight compassion because compassion is an organization

whose mission is to release children from poverty in Jesus' name.

Let me say that again.

Their mission is to release children from poverty in Jesus' name.

Huge mission.

It is not just to eradicate poverty, but to do it for children in particular and in the

name of Jesus.

So it's Christ centred, child focused and church based.

So to do this, they make a very complex thing, very simple.

Through local churches like ours in developing countries and in Australia, they connect individuals

together in a sponsoring relationship.

Now a lot of you will know about this, right?

World Vision Compassion.

It's very familiar.

They connect one child with one sponsor, but they facilitate it through the community and

integrity of the local church.

So it's not just throw you over there, throw you over there, hope for the best.

No, no, no.

We know that there's actually a development center happening on the ground in Indonesia.

And we know that over here there is a church committed and focused to praying for them

and lifting these people up.

It's not just money, it's prayer, it's heart.

There's more than that.

If it's just money, it's not enough.

But right now, more than two million children are sponsored through Compassion.

So not throughout their history, like today, right now, more than two million kids.

I would have thought that's pretty good.

Two million kids lifted out of poverty.

The finances have integrity, their organization is successful, and they do it all in Jesus'

name.

So that is why we work with Compassion.

We sponsor around 50 kids as a church across both our sites.

I've got no idea how many are here and how many are there, but about 50 across Adelaide,

which is awesome.

And I know many of you are a part of that.

And so I had the privilege earlier this year of going to Indonesia with Compassion, which

was just amazing.

So I got to meet one of our sponsor kids, my family sponsor kids, to see how Compassion

operates.

And I was really interested because I've sponsored Compassion Kids for a long time.

Been a big advocate for a long time.

But you always kind of secretly go, how's the sausage made?

Like, okay, let's be honest.

When you give money to a charity, you go, where's the money going?

I get it.

I'm giving it to the charity.

It's a good thing, but where's the money going?

Just tell me.

Just tell me.

It's okay.

I'm fine.

But just tell me.

Compassion is more impressive behind closed doors than they are in front of them.

Far more impressive.

You go behind and to see how the sausage is made, way more impressive behind closed doors.

I've got a limited amount of time.

But this idea of bringing one sponsor and one child and using the church to bring them

together is way more complex than it seems, right?

When you go to the shops and you take your phone and you tap to pay for something, that's

incredibly easy for you.

And it's incredibly difficult for a back-end person somewhere who's organised an entire

system that's enabled some dude to go to coals and pay from their bank.

And you know what I mean?

That transfer is complex behind the scenes, but for you, very, very easy.

That's what Compassion is like.

They have turned it into being a very easy thing to sponsor a child by making all the

complications on the back end.

So they deal with that in an incredible way, both in Australia and on the ground in Indonesia.

Ask me later if you want more of that information.

I don't have time.

But I wanted to talk a little bit about the blessing of meeting my sponsor, Keith.

So this is Vero.

We went to a theme park and we're hanging out behind the people in green are people that

work at Compassion's office.

No, not Compassion's office.

Sorry, they work at the church, the child development centre, the church, same thing

over there, in Jogjakarta, which is where Vero is from.

The lady directly behind her is a mother.

It's Reverend Josh Shearer off to the side and there's me looking happy.

Why don't we just zoom in at how happy my sponsor child is to be at a theme park?

She's never been to a theme park before.

It's all she wanted, having the time of her life.

I still get a couple of other photos, just having a great time at a theme park.

Here's her celebrating, getting a lovely gift from me.

There's a side eye there so strong that I'm not sure her eyes ever straightened again.

There's her enjoying being on a ride.

Why don't we just zoom into that one, Chels?

You see there her mother physically holding her hand up to wave to me.

I don't want to miss how much she did not want to wave to me.

This poor kid's like eight years old and my daughter is really her sponsor.

She got there, she travels two hours.

She was up four in the morning because she was excited.

So she's exhausted.

She's traveled for ages.

She gets there.

And then instead of my daughter, Grace, who was this beautiful, sweet person,

she's like, who is this middle aged white guy?

What is happening?

It is.

Wait, she did or I did because I'm paying the money in this situation.

Was there a mutual catfishing?

I don't know.

Anyway, but if you look at her mother there, the look in her eyes is not

faint because an eight year old kid doesn't understand how their life has

been changed, but her mother understands that our family has invested finances

in her prayer, communication.

My daughter writes to her often.

And now I've traveled all the way over Indonesia because I care enough about

this girl to meet her in person.

And so when I met her mother, she was in tears, bawling, because she understood

the importance of what it means and how it has changed her entire family.

Now, Vera is not the most amazing meeting your compassion child story.

So let's meet Elisa instead.

This is Elisa.

Elisa is sponsored by Haley Stephen, who's part of our prospect community.

Many of you will know her.

I told Haley beforehand that I was going to be preaching at the church where

Elisa worships and so she was like, OK, so she organized this teddy bear.

So it's like a builder bear koala.

And when you squeeze a tent, Haley's got a prayer that she's praying over Elisa

so she can hear her sponsor's voice.

Now, Elisa was there because she had to be it was church.

But there was these sponsors that had come with us from Queensland.

They sponsor, they're just a couple of farmers.

They sponsor 10 kids, 10 kids, this family.

And so they seated them all up before them like this giant Brady bunch thing.

And and there's all these gifts and photos and Elisa's brother is one of them.

And so it was amazing for their family.

Mum and dad were there.

They're taking photos.

Guess who can feel a little bit left out in that situation?

Elisa, she's dressed up because she had to do a performance.

But but her brother is sitting there with her compassion sponsor.

And she's just sort of off to the side watching it going, oh.

And then I walked up with a translator and I explained that her sponsor

knew her and saw her.

And from all the way over in Australia had sent me with a special gift for her.

And her smile could have lit up the room.

Which was very helpful for me after the amusement park experience.

Here's the thing.

Poverty looks different from person to person.

Geese, this is the most Christian thing I've ever seen.

There are like nine free seats.

Just sit in the free seat.

Come down the front.

This is like, no, no, I'll get extra seats.

Sit further up them.

Yeah, no.

And I was trying to absolutely remove that.

Here's the thing.

Poverty looks different from person to person.

Looks really different.

Right.

In Indonesia, it's not really about food.

They live in a climate where it's quite easy to get food.

Education is a huge problem.

And it means it caps out.

And because education not only caps out for them early, but it's really expensive.

It means that if they can't, yes, they can afford food, but living is expensive.

And that means they can't afford education.

And if they're going to continue to afford to be able to live,

they need to pull kids out of education and put them into the workplace earlier.

That's what happens.

But the great gift of compassion is that they are geniuses

at eliminating the poverty of opportunity.

That is the poverty that comes from never being able to break the cycle of poverty.

Less ideas, less hope, less chances.

So compassion provides finance and opportunity for a kid,

meaning the family has more income for food and then the other children as well.

So if compassion kids, the compassion kid gets a bigger boost than the rest of the family.

That's just that's just true.

Right.

But the entire family rises because this compassion kid gets all these opportunities

and some of the normal things they'd have to pay for get paid for by a sponsor,

which means they don't have to get paid for by the family,

which means the pool of money that they're scrimping and saving to pay for this kid,

they can then guarantee their other kid gets an education.

And then they can guarantee that they're in stable living environments,

which means they don't have to pull the kid out of school early,

which means the kid can be working, working, not working,

but remain in education and go through and break the cycle of poverty.

That's what it does.

So I need you to know that when you sponsor a compassion kid, it's one to one.

But the entire family is lifted out of poverty.

It's extraordinary.

So then then I met Jova.

Jova, this was a little boy whose family I went to visit.

There he is.

He's the baby being held.

That's his eldest brother and then his middle brother down there on the ground.

I'm up the back there somewhere.

And when I went to his house and I saw it,

that I'm standing in what is his brother's bedroom slash living room slash kitchen.

They have two rooms.

There's that in the next door is where the parents and the two youngest kids sleep.

That's it. That's how they live.

They're in they're in Indonesia.

It's 2024 and they're in an urban area.

This is how they live.

This is the poverty they have.

Is that and then later, the old guy at the back, Simon,

he was running the trip.

He said, listen, Jova needs a sponsor.

I was like, yeah, I knew we would come back with another sponsor child.

So let's lay it on me.

This is great.

And so that's that's Jova's letter.

Obviously, he's pretty little.

He can't write very much, but he's now a third sponsor child.

I just I had to sponsor him.

I saw his life.

I saw what compassion could do and I saw what I could do if I plugged into that system.

So now we have three sponsor kids one for each of my children.

So they line up and they connect with them.

This next photo is a photo of a bunch of compassion.

Oh, no, let's go to the next one.

Sorry, my fault.

Sorry, Chelsea.

This is a bunch of compassion alumni.

OK, so we had a dinner with these guys.

These are all people who have come through compassion on the far left.

Your left.

Yeah, everyone's left, whatever is is owner.

Owner comes from Batak in Sumatra.

He's an economics and accounting teacher at St.

John's Christian School.

He's writing curriculum across multiple schools.

He's doing his master's of education at the University of Bundle.

Next to him is Simon Simon from Jogjakarta.

He's an entrepreneur.

He's an owner of an EV franchise.

And he dreams of funding his own public primary school by the age of 50.

The next kid is the next guy is Krishna Bagus.

But great last name, Bagus just means good.

And and he's from Salatiga at a church.

I actually got to visit.

He's an entrepreneur.

He owns seven laundry franchises.

He dreams of a thousand across multiple continents.

And the final one is Charisma.

What a name the guy with the microphone.

He's from Kupang, which is a tiny poverty stricken island.

It's one of those tiny, tiny islands in the archipelago.

He works as a project management officer for a private equity firm.

And he dreams of transforming public education policy.

These guys are unbelievable.

You hear that and you're like, oh, so they started in poverty

and they're doing better than me now.

And Charisma with the microphone, he told this story.

He he told a story about how he was so blessed because he was sponsored consistently.

But in in his school, everyone would get the letters all at once.

You got to be realistic.

They get bulk delivered.

And so all the kids would get their letters.

But but Charisma's sponsor never wrote to him.

So all the kids would be getting letters and he's there with nothing.

Now, he's lifted out of poverty economically.

But but relationally, there's a pain in his heart as every other kid gets a letter.

And he turned to us and he said, honestly, it doesn't matter how bad your letter is.

Just write something.

You have no idea how much it matters.

If you've got a compassion kid, they are desperate to get these letters from you.

All they want is to hear from someone who loves them.

And the things that are boring and mundane for you are unusual and special for them.

You don't have to write much.

You don't have to write anything amazing.

Just write something.

Just write something.

And so afterwards, I was chatting to Krishna, the guy just next to Charisma there.

I said, mate, you're unbelievable.

Look at you.

You've worked so hard for this and compassion has blessed you so much.

You're doing a great job.

Compassion is doing a great job.

And he looked at me as if like, like as if he was translating what I was saying,

but his English was too good for that.

So he wasn't.

And then it kicked in.

He's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Compassion, they're great.

And yes, I worked very hard.

You don't understand though.

It's like you've missed the memo.

God has blessed me.

God has done this.

It's not an organization.

It's not a sponsor.

God has lifted me out of poverty and created for me a new life and a new opportunity.

He has given me everything.

They're not only further along in life than you.

They are better Christians than you.

Compassion is a revival factory, man, because they pour it out through the local church.

Now I'm being a bit tongue in cheek, obviously, but they are pouring out through the local church.

So that hand in hand, they get the gospel economic opportunities, relational opportunities,

spiritual opportunities, everything rises with them all of it together.

So an entire family is lifted out of spiritual poverty as well as economic poverty.

Unbelievable.

And God is doing something with us encounter Henley and with Indonesia, especially in Java,

especially as a place called Soliti.

Get to figure back to that one.

I put in the wrong order for you, Chelsea.

This is my friend Liberty.

She was our translator.

She's my friend.

She speaks four languages.

She's warm and funny and brilliant.

And of course, she's a compassionate kid.

She came through that.

Now she works for Compassion.

Her job is to deal with the pastors as they come over and explain to them exactly what Compassion does.

And I said, I was so sorry.

And that's the Java project.

That's our long-term plan to partner with Indonesia.

Our next steps to begin some regular visits.

And I mean, conversation with Compassion about that and partnerships with individual churches on the ground

so that we know them church to church as well as person to person, then who knows?

Maybe we'll plan a church there someday.

I know at least one of our staff team desperately wants to.

So as I go towards the end of this, I just say this.

Compassion eliminates the poverty of opportunity.

Sponsorship creates the opportunity.

Opportunity then gives the kids permission to actually dream about their future.

Those alumni can dream because they're out of poverty.

When you're stuck in poverty, you're not allowed to dream.

What are you going to dream about?

And then dreams allow them to actually live out their lives in the image of God, their father, in the image of the creator.

They become creators themselves.

And so you donate into Compassion literally lifts families out of poverty economically, relationally, spiritually.

And the Compassion supply chain starts with you, your money, your prayers and your letters.

Do not forget the letters.

So to go back to tithes and offerings in your personal finances, tithes are where God challenges you to give to the church.

Offerings are how God challenges you to support organizations like Compassion.

Now, why talk about all this in a sermon and why is this all so important?

Let me come to a close.

Jonathan Edwards, the great Christian reformer in the 1730s, he said this,

there's nothing more clear in the Bible than the command to care for the poor.

Jesus told people to give to the poor in Mark 10, 21, said that we should invite the poor into our lives in Luke 14, 13,

that he comes to bring good news to the poor in Matthew 11, 5,

and most tellingly that there is judgment upon us when we do not care for the poor.

There is a parable in the Gospel of Matthew where he tells a story about a king casting people out of the kingdom of God who profess to be followers of Jesus,

but do not care about the poor.

And he says, you've rejected me by rejecting them.

The story of the rich man and Lazarus and Luke 16 echoes that.

Now, you may push back on this and say, oh, well, Mike, Jesus says we always have the poor with us.

That is Jesus guarantees until the kingdom of God comes in full, there will always be poverty on earth.

How brilliant is that?

You will never lack an opportunity for generosity.

The poor you will always have with you, so never forget them.

Now, that doesn't mean each one of you is solely responsible for every poor person in the world,

because sometimes that's how it feels, the weight on your shoulders.

It just means for Christians, it's non-negotiable to love and serve the poor.

It's non-negotiable.

And for us in wealthy Australia, if we can read the passages about the poor in scripture,

they could motivate us, but they could also make us feel weighed down with guilt.

But the poor are not our opportunity for guilt, they are our opportunity for grace.

Let me borrow from Tim Keller to explain.

Our generosity comes from a place of grace, because in the Sermon on the Mount,

when Jesus says, blessed are the poor, we heard it before in Luke, blessed are the poor, Jesus is speaking to us.

And in Matthew's Gospel, we hear a different translation. Jesus says, blessed are you when you are poor in spirit.

Now, who's poor in spirit?

You are poor in spirit. You are.

You are the ones who need the Gospel to rescue you.

In fact, Keller would say, the only way for you to come to God is by being poor in spirit.

Recognizing that we have nothing without Him, I have nothing without Jesus.

The rejection of God gives Him every right to condemn us to hell and yet,

and yet instead, God in His generosity to us has become poor on our behalf.

God reaches out with compassion towards us because we are poor in spirit.

He has lifted us up and out of our sin away from death and into hope.

How has He done that?

Through Jesus.

Jesus became poor on our behalf.

God enthroned in glory in heaven was born in a dirty stable.

The Son of God with all power born to poor teenage parents.

He possessed power and authority over everything yet He comes to serve the people of the world.

He enters His royal city, Jerusalem on a donkey instead of a stallion.

His crown is made of jewels.

It meant to be made of jewels instead it's made of thorns.

He crucified on a junk heap outside of the city buried in a borrowed grave

and even His last item of clothing is stolen by soldiers gambling for it.

Jesus knew poverty and He impoverished Himself for you, for everyone here

that you might understand the compassion and grace and hand of God towards you.

Jesus came to bring good news to the poor and the poor in spirit.

This is what He says, I've gone to prepare a place for you in the house of the Father.

So don't seek treasures on earth, seek them in heaven because Jesus has invited you to His table.

And in heaven you and I will sit side by side with Indonesian heroes of the faith

and cry and hug and worship and celebrate that we've been welcomed into the kingdom of God together.

God has eliminated your spiritual poverty.

You come to Him bringing poverty of spirit and exchange your receive God's spirit.

So what's the point of this?

What's the point of Encounter's Mission?

What's the point of the Java Project?

Here's the point, to help you as the church to have a practical understandable way

of how you can love and serve the poor.

To not reinvent the wheel but say actually can we help you to do this

because it is essential for your soul.

So I think there's two things that need to be addressed in a message like this.

And I've very kind of mentioned them but I want to talk about them as we have a time of response.

The first is that when we have a time like this we can feel guilty about what we haven't done

and let ourselves be beaten up and God's saying in this moment, don't feel judgment.

Jesus didn't come to bring judgment but forgiveness.

Jesus comes to set you free from guilt and shame.

So if you're feeling a bit guilty about what you haven't done from the poor, give it to Jesus.

The flip side of that is you may actually need to repent of what you haven't done for the poor.

And maybe you're here and you're like, Mike, I'm a Christian.

I've been a Christian for a long time.

Okay, how have you loved the poor?

That's between you and God. You don't need to tell me.

But you may need to repent of what you have not done to the poor.

But I think more than anything at the end of this we are reminded that we are not all economically poor.

Most of us in this room probably aren't.

But we are all poor in spirit.

And I sense as I was praying for this service that God, if you're here and you would identify with feeling poor in spirit tonight,

God wants to minister to you. His spirit is present. His Holy Spirit is with us in the room.

And really what it takes from us is a response where we acknowledge, God, I need you.

I feel broken. I feel poor in spirit.

And that's not a thing for people who aren't yet believers.

I mean, it can be, but for everyone, you can be a pastor here and go, I feel poor in spirit tonight.

I need instead the spirit of God poured out on me.

So I just wonder if you could take a second to close your eyes and bow your heads, just to create a bit of a bit of space, a bit of anonymity.

And if you're here and as you've been hearing all this and going through your life and feeling you're weak from week to week and maybe feel exhausted or tired or I don't know.

But if you would identify with that and say, Mike, I feel poor in spirit and I need God's spirit to fill me.

Would you just slip up your hand while people's eyes are shut? You get a bit of anonymity to do that.

That's great. Don't be ashamed. If you need what God's got, slip it right up.

Leaders, new people, don't be afraid. The spirit of God is with you.

I'm going to pray a prayer now for this time, by the way, for you to join those people who put their hand up.

But I'm going to pray a prayer for all of you and I just invite you to receive the spirit of God.

And then I'm going to be over to the side here and I would really encourage you to come and let me pray for you in person.

Because there is something about bringing yourself in humility before God and letting him minister to you.

So God, I just come right now and I ask for those people that have slipped their hand up to say, God, I need you.

I am poor in spirit. Would you pour out your Holy Spirit on them today?

Right now in the name of Jesus.

Pour out your spirit, Lord.

Father, we come to you empty. Jesus, through your kindness and through the spirit of God, you leave us filled.

You don't leave us where you are, but you move us on.

God, in our humility of spirit, would you meet us with the truths that Jesus tells us? You are my child.

You are dearly loved. I call you daughter. I call you son. I have never forgotten you. I have never overlooked you.

But come, come. Jesus has this moment in the Gospels where he quotes from the book of Isaiah.

He stands up on the last day of the festival and he says, if anyone is thirsty, come to me and be filled with living water.

That's the promise of Jesus for you tonight. If you are poor in spirit, weary, Jesus promises living water.

Holy Spirit, come. And as we respond, as we sing, would you pour yourself out on us tonight in Jesus' name?

Amen. Amen. I'm going to be off to the side. I would love to pray for you.

I know what can feel a bit confronting to sort of come down the front for prayer.

Here's the question you want to ask yourself. Am I more worried about what someone thinks than I am about being prayed for and filled with the spirit of God?

Only you can answer that. It's up to you, but I would love to pray for you.