CBFC Worship Service 10/4/2026 | Our Mission: Multiply His Church

Good morning.

Welcome again to Community Bible Fellowship Church.

My name is Daniel.

I'm the guy that woos in the back anytime there's a youth announcement, expecting somebody else to join in with the excitement and they never do, but it's okay.

Thanks, Andy.

We're gonna be in Psalm 67 this morning.

So if you have a Bible and want to grab one in the back or in the hallway, you can turn to Psalm 67.

It is going to be a bit of a longer message today, so forgive me.

But I believe it's important, so I pray that we would lean into the significance of what we're talking about from Psalm 67.

Several years ago, God spoke to me.

I know it was God.

I heard his words in my mind as clearly as you might recall a recent conversation and hear it replaying in your mind.

I was driving home late at night, crying out to God in a season of restlessness and exhaustion, like literally crying out, weeping, yelling.

I just felt like I was hanging on by a thread, uh, and I I I so badly wanted some kind of relief, and I just kept asking, why?

Why?

Why am I like this?

Why is my life this way?

Why do I have to keep going on?

Why won't you come back already, Jesus, and fix all of this mess?

Or take me now.

Why?

And I pulled into the driveway and and got out of the car, and something made me look up, and I as I looked up at the stars on a very clear night, immediately my mind, for whatever reason, went to Abraham 4,000 years ago when God brought him outside and told him to look up at those same stars, and my thoughts were just racing from Abraham to Jesus, and I heard, like deep within me, I heard the words, that my house may be filled.

Why, God?

Why do I have to keep going on with this?

That my house may be filled.

Why am I going through this?

Why am I suffering?

Why am I here?

That my house may be filled.

Those words are from Scripture, which is how God speaks to each of us every day.

I'm not a prophet, this isn't something unique to me.

This is the Bible that God speaks through.

His words are from Luke 14, where Jesus tells a story depicting himself as a wealthy host, throwing this tremendous banquet, this huge feast, and after being rejected by the rich and religious and respected, he opens the invitation to anyone and everyone, even down to the most pitiful and rejected members of society.

Jesus concludes the story this way in Luke 14.

The master said to his servant, Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.

And the servant said, Sir, what you have commanded has been done, and still there is room.

And the master said to his servant, Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled.

What struck me that night, staring up at the stars, was the vastness, the fullness, the totality of what Jesus desires for his house, his kingdom, his creation, and with it came this fresh awareness of the glorious and weighty task to which God has called all of his people, every single one of us.

I felt like God, in my little moment of doubting, despair, and self-pity, dragged me up outside, pushed my chin up towards something so much larger than myself, and said, Look, don't you remember?

Have you forgotten the story I've been telling from Adam to Abraham to the moment I came down myself into history to save the world and to make you a part of it and to give your life purpose and hope?

Have you forgotten my plan and my promise?

And have you forgotten the role that you now play in it?

This is the great purpose that God has been carrying out from the beginning of the world.

He intends to fill his house.

He intends to fill this earth with people who know him and praise him and enjoy him and fear him, and somehow by his unfathomable grace, he has given us a part to play in that.

For the last few weeks, we've been considering our mission as a church, which we're putting this way.

We exist to glorify God by magnifying his name, maturing his people, and multiplying his church.

Let's try again this week, now that we have it, which I realized I think was an error on my part last week, so forgive me for calling out Noah.

Let's read this all together.

Can we do that?

We exist to glorify God by magnifying his name, maturing his people, and multiplying his church.

Amen.

And today we're coming to that final phrase: multiplying his church.

We exist to glorify God by multiplying his church.

Not multiplying CBFC per se, but participating in the grander mission, what God has been doing throughout all of history, gathering a people for himself from every nation, every tribe, people, and language until his house is full, until his praise fills all the earth.

And few places in Scripture capture that purpose more beautifully and succinctly than Psalm 67.

So I invite you to turn your eyes there with me, and to please stand if you're able for the reading of God's holy word.

Psalm 67.

To the choir master with stringed instruments, a psalm, a song.

May God be gracious to us and bless us, and make his face to shine upon us, that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations.

Let the peoples praise you, O God.

Let all the peoples praise you.

Let the nations be glad and sing for joy.

For you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon the earth.

Let the peoples praise you, O God.

Let all the peoples praise you.

The earth has yielded its increase.

God, our God, shall bless us.

God shall bless us.

Let all the ends of the earth fear him.

This is God's word, he may be seated.

Will you pray with me once more?

Lord Jesus, you have blessed us so richly in yourself and in your people here.

We ask now that you would bless us further with your word and its truth and its power that we might go from here ready and eager to be a blessing to the lost world around us.

Lord, open our eyes to see truth.

Open our hearts to receive it and believe it.

And Lord, may we leave changed by you and by your word and better equipped to serve you.

We pray this for your glory, Jesus.

Amen.

This morning I want us to consider three things about multiplying Christ's church.

First, the story.

What is God doing in the world through history?

Second, the task, what has he given his church to do?

And finally, the response.

What might it actually look like for me, for us as a church to give ourselves to that task in that story?

And we we begin with the story.

Because long before Jesus ever told his disciples to go into all the world, God has been revealing from the very beginning what he intended to do with it and throughout history.

If you want to understand the story of the world, the story of humanity, the story of the Bible, you have to go all the way back to the beginning.

In Genesis 1, God creates human beings in his image.

He meets with them on Mount Eden, he blesses them.

And then the very first words God speaks to humanity are these: Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

So that's the purpose, that's the call for humanity.

Multiply, fill the earth.

And notice what God wants to fill his earth.

It's the image of God, it's people.

God creates a world for his glory, places his images, his image-bearers within it to reflect and display his glory, and then commissions them to multiply and spread until the whole earth is filled with people who know God and reflect God and display God and live in joyful, worshipful fellowship with God.

That's the purpose from the beginning.

God's glory filling God's world through God's people filling God's world.

But almost immediately, spoiler alert, sin enters the story, and humanity still multiplies, they still reproduce, the earth becomes filled in a sense, but now it's filled with corrupted and distorted images that do not reflect the glory of God.

In fact, Genesis 6 says, the earth was corrupt and filled with violence.

And eventually, then in Genesis 11, humanity gathers together at Babel and says, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.

You hear that?

That directly contradicts God's plan and purpose for humanity.

God says, Spread out and fill the earth with my image.

Humanity says, stay here and make a name for ourselves.

That's the basic problem of sin.

God made us to magnify his name, and we want to magnify ours.

God made us to fill his world with his glory, and instead we fill it with ours.

In fact, churches can become Babel-like.

We can gather together, we can build ourselves up and make a name and a brand for ourselves and forget that God intends for us to fill his earth, to be sent out.

So God sees Babel trying to make a name for themselves, and he scatters them, he mixes up their languages and spreads them out, and then immediately after Babel, the story shifts to this one man named Abraham.

And God says to Abraham in Genesis 12, I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great.

But listen to why, so that you will be a blessing, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

So humanity has rebelled and sin against God, but God's going to do what humanity failed to do.

He's going to take one man and multiply him into a people, and through that people, his blessing is going to spread until it reaches all the families of the earth.

Every people group on the planet.

And when Abraham begins to doubt that promise of God, God brings him outside and he says, Look toward heaven and number the stars if you are able to number them.

Then God said to him, So shall your offspring be.

He's saying, Look up.

I'm gonna fill my house.

I'm gonna fill this globe with people who worship my son Jesus.

Psalm 67, then, is essentially God's people, hundreds and hundreds of years later, taking that ancient promise to Abraham and praying it back to God.

May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, that, so that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations.

That word that is incredibly important in this Psalm.

God bless us.

Why?

God be gracious to us.

Why?

That your name may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations.

So God's blessing was never supposed to stop with God's people.

God blesses his people so that his blessing flows through his people to the world.

That's the promise to Abraham.

I will bless you so that you will be a blessing.

And Psalm 67 takes that promise and prays for its fulfillment.

Look at the universal language throughout this Psalm.

They're praying for the earth, all nations, the peoples, all the peoples, the ends of the earth.

The psalmist wants the blessing of God to spill over every boundary until the whole world knows him and praises him and enjoys him and fears him.

That's God's desire.

To be known, praised, enjoyed, and feared among every people group.

Verses 1 and 2.

May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations.

God wants to be known among all nations.

Verse 3 and verse 5.

Verse 4, let the nations be glad and sing for joy.

God wants every nation to have joy in Jesus Christ.

Verse 7, God shall bless us.

Let all the ends of the earth fear him.

So God intends to be feared, worshiped, revered by all the ends of the earth.

Known, praised, enjoyed, and feared among every people group on the planet.

And now we can see how this third part of our mission statement flows directly out of the first.

Why do we want to multiply his church?

Because we want to magnify his name.

We don't care about missions here so that Christianity can look better than other religions.

We don't evangelize so that CBFC can report bigger numbers.

We want more people to worship Jesus because Jesus is worthy of more worshipers.

There are places in this world where Jesus Christ is not known, where his praises are not sung, where his presence is not enjoyed, where his name is not feared, and he is worthy of their knowledge, their praise, their joy, their fear and worship.

He is worthy of being worshipped by every people.

That's the heart of missions.

John Piper states it really well.

He says, missions is not the ultimate goal of the church.

Worship is.

Missions exist because worship doesn't.

Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man.

When this age is over and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more, but worship abides forever.

And we see this great purpose then continue throughout the rest of the Old Testament.

The Psalms consistently say, Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all peoples.

Psalm 96, like we saw a few weeks ago.

The prophets repeatedly promise that God will be known and worshipped among all peoples, and that his servant, Jesus, will become a light for the nations so that God's salvation may reach the ends of the earth.

So everything is pushing outward from beginning to end.

And then Jesus finally comes.

The promised offspring of Abraham arrives.

God himself comes down into the world, dies, rises to purchase for himself the people he promised from the beginning.

And after his resurrection, Jesus stands before his disciples on a mountain and says, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.

You see this, right?

This isn't some new project that Jesus invented at the end of Matthew, or that Paul worked together in Acts.

This is the story.

From beginning to end, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Let all the peoples praise you.

I will make of you a light for the nations.

Go and make disciples of all nations.

And then Jesus ascends and pours out his spirit at Pentecost, and suddenly the mighty works of God are being proclaimed in the languages of the nations as Babel is reversed, and people are gathered from the ends of the earth at Pentecost to hear the gospel in their own tongue and then take it back with them to the nations.

And from there the book of Acts just explodes outward.

The last thing Jesus says to his people in Acts before ascending is this: He says, You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

And that's what starts to happen.

Again and again, Acts tells us that the word of God increased and multiplied.

Disciples multiply, churches multiply, missionaries multiply, worship multiplies across the world.

God is filling his house.

And Acts concludes then by saying, remarkably, that even in the midst of all the resistance and persecution and unbelief and the suffering of God's people, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ continues to advance without hindrance.

Unhindered.

As the church is being slaughtered, the gospel goes forth unhindered.

And where is all of this going?

God lets us see a glimpse in Revelation 7, where John says, Behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages standing before the throne and before the Lamb.

And what are they doing?

They're worshiping.

Psalm 67 has been answered.

Let the peoples praise you, O God.

Let all the peoples praise you.

Creation begins with God on Mount Eden, commissioning humanity to multiply and fill his earth with his image.

And the new creation begins in Christ's resurrection, with God Himself standing again on a mountain in Matthew 28 and commissioning a new humanity to multiply and fill the earth with his image.

And it all ends with this renewed humanity, conformed to the Christ's image, so multiplied that no one can number them, drawn from every corner of the earth, filling God's new creation with the praises and worship of Jesus Christ.

That's how the story ends.

This is the story we're a part of.

That's why you exist.

That's what God has been doing for thousands of years.

That's where all of history is headed.

But as certain as Revelation 7 is, we aren't there yet.

His house will be filled.

But right now there is still room.

There are still peoples among whom Jesus is not known.

His gospel is not proclaimed.

His praises are not sung.

We are, as we're about to sing in a new song that Noah will lead us in in just a moment, we are facing a task unfinished.

So that brings us from the story to the task.

It can be easy for us to feel in 2026 like we live at a big distance from the mighty works of God in history.

Like we're in some sort of weird gap between the heavenly glory that is to come when Jesus returns and the exciting miracles and redemption that took place in Bible times.

But when we take a step back to view the story of the Bible as a whole, the story of humanity as a whole, we can see that we are not in some lull in history.

This is not just an interim that we live through and just deal with until Jesus comes back.

This is the climactic age that all of Scripture has been anticipating, that all of God's people have been longing to see for millennia.

The age when the gospel is going forth to the nations, when Christ is building his church through the proclamation of the good news.

We are not in some dull, unessential interval between great times of miracles and glory.

We are living in the peak of human history.

We are living in the midst of massive, eternity-shifting, redemptive work as God accomplishes miracles through you and me, far more glorious than opening the eyes of the blind or casting out demons or raising the dead.

Because our task, by God's grace, is in a greater way opening the eyes of the blind and casting out demons and raising the dead.

That's what God is doing, and Christ has given that task to his church, accomplished by the spread of the gospel.

So Romans 10 asks, 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?

And how are they to preach unless they are sent?

This is how the task is accomplished.

Someone has to go, and someone has to send.

Now that does not mean that the person across the street is unimportant.

Your unbelieving neighbor needs Jesus.

Your coworker needs Jesus.

Your children need Jesus.

The person that sits beside you at school needs Jesus.

Every soul is precious.

And every Christian should be prepared to speak the gospel where God has placed us.

But Scripture also Gives particular attention to places where there is no existing church doing that work.

Paul says something remarkable in Romans 15.

After years of missionary work, he says, I no longer have any room for work in these regions.

What does he mean?

Are there no more unbelievers?

No, there are thousands of unbelievers all around him.

But churches had been established, the gospel had taken root, there were Christians there who could reach their neighbors.

And so Paul says, I make it my ambition to preach the gospel not where Christ has already been named.

He turns his eyes towards Spain.

So there is a difference between someone who doesn't know Christ while living surrounded by Christians and churches, and an entire people among whom there is no viable church proclaiming Christ, no believers to bump into at work, no gospel preached in their own tongue, no Bible in their language.

In the first case, Christians simply need to be faithful where God has placed us.

In the second, someone needs to be sent.

We need to see and understand the desperation of these people groups who have no gospel.

We're about to sing, where other lords beside thee hold their unhindered sway, where forces that defied thee defy thee still today, with none to heed their crying.

For life and love and light, unnumbered souls are dying and pass into the night.

So the task of multiplying for CBFC is not primarily about multiplying CBFC and making our church bigger.

That's good.

And we should do that.

That's important, that's part of it.

But the ultimate goal of this task we've been given is what we saw in Revelation 7: a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages standing before the throne of Jesus in worship.

That's the task we've inherited.

The same commission Christ gave his first disciples has been passed down through generation of after generation of Christians suffering and dying until the gospel finally reached us, and now the torch is in our hands.

Again, as we're about to sing, we bear the torch that flaming fell from the hands of those who gave their lives, proclaiming that Jesus died and rose.

Ours is the same commission, the same glad message, ours, fired by the same ambition, to thee we yield our powers.

We don't carry that torch alone.

The Christ who commands us to go and make disciples of all nations first tells us all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, and then follows it up by promising, I am with you always to the end of the age.

So the task is enormous, but the power is his.

The task is enormous.

7,000 unreached people groups, at least.

Over 3,000 language groups with no portion of Scripture translated into their language.

Billions of people who have never heard the gospel.

The task is enormous, but the power is his all power, all authority in heaven and on earth belongs to Jesus, whose message we carry, whose word we speak, in whose power the kingdom advances unhindered, and the church is multiplied.

And he has chosen to use us as his instruments.

The question for each of us then and for CBFC together is what part are we going to play?

And that brings us finally from the story and the task to the response.

Every one of us is called to multiply Christ's church and to be a part of this mission to reach every people group with the gospel.

But we don't all do that in the same way.

I'm going to give you five ways you can practically contribute to the mission of Jesus and his church.

Now, before I do, I want to acknowledge up front that in all likelihood, most of us will be inclined for several of these to immediately write them off as not for us as soon as the words come out of my mouth.

I just want to ask you not to let yourself do that.

I want to challenge us to refrain from telling ourselves or telling God what He has or has not called us to, but to write each of these down or take a picture at the end or however you want to do it, and commit to going home and praying about every single one of these and asking if it is something that God is calling you to do.

Before you write it off, before you laugh at my suggestions or dismiss them as unreasonable, commit to spending serious time in prayer individually or as a family and remaining open to whatever the Spirit leads you to.

Can someone do that?

Practical way to contribute to the mission of Jesus and his church, number one, is this become a missionary to an unreached people group.

Remember Romans 10.

How are they to hear without someone preaching?

And how are they to preach unless they are sent?

Somebody has to go.

Somebody has to do what Paul did and say, There's no room for me here.

Send me somewhere where Christ has never been named.

Somebody has to do what Jesus did.

And leave their home and their luxury and take the form of a slave and take up their cross and die.

And yes, it will cost you.

You might give up a career, comfort, proximity to family, financial security, physical health, even your life.

Many of these people do not want you to come.

When King David would send men into battle against an army significantly larger than their own, the soldiers on the front line knew what was happening.

They understood what was coming.

We're gonna die.

50,000 of us go out, the thousand on the front line, no, we're gonna die in all likelihood.

But we will go first to fight and die gladly for our king and for his kingdom.

That's the mindset of frontline frontier missions.

Dear friends, you may lose very much that this world has to offer should the Spirit of Jesus call you to this task.

But every ounce of your loss will only mean greater gain for you and for the kingdom of God.

Not only is it a divine design that Christ's church and his kingdom advances through the suffering and the persecution and the martyrdom of his people, but as Jesus told his disciples, truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the gospel who will not receive a hundredfold, now, in this time, with persecutions and in the age to come, eternal life.

Every loss for the sake of the gospel produces a hundredfold gain now and in eternity through persecution.

The Christian life has this strange economy in which what we surrender for Christ becomes gain for his kingdom and for us.

We may lose home, comfort, wealth, security, even family, even our lives, but we'll discover through that in Christ, in his people, and participation in his kingdom, we'll discover riches that far outweigh anything we could give up.

Which is why missionaries who give their lives, like Jim Elliott, can say things like He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

It's why David Livingston, after a lifetime of missions in Africa, facing repeated, life-threatening illness and hunger, and the death of his wife, attacks from lions, extreme isolation and loneliness, and horrific violence, could say this.

People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa.

Can that be called a sacrifice?

Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blessed reward away with the word in such a view and with such a thought?

It is emphatically no sacrifice.

Say rather, it is a privilege.

Anxiety, sickness, suffering, danger now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause and cause the spirit to waver and the soul to sink.

But let this only be for a moment.

All these things are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us.

I never made a sacrifice.

He lost his wife.

He lost his arm to a lion.

No sacrifice.

You will not sacrifice for the mission of Christ and for his gospel and glory.

In your loss, you will only gain.

You may give up everything.

You will never outgive Jesus.

So I'm not asking, I'm not asking everyone here to become a missionary, but I am asking every one of you to seriously consider it before God.

Before you even give a thought to your house, your career, your age, your ability, your comfort.

Would you consider Christ?

Before you decide what you can and cannot give up, would you simply go to Him with open hands and say, Lord, I surrender all.

What would you have me do?

That's option one.

Don't worry, we got some more.

Second practical way to contribute to the mission of Jesus and his church is to move to the city and support the church there.

I'm aware that the first two have included leaving CBFC.

Maybe God isn't calling you overseas, but would you consider going somewhere where there is an especially great need and an especially great opportunity for the gospel to have great impact?

One of the remarkable things that God is doing in our time and in our country is bringing the nations to us by moving them right into our cities.

People from other countries and people groups that are extraordinarily difficult for missionaries to enter are moving to places like Philadelphia and New York.

People we might have to cross an ocean and learn a language and acquire a visa to reach overseas are living in our state.

They've gotten the visa and learned the language and moved overseas for us.

The nations are waiting for us next door.

And it's not unheard of for a person from an unreached group to come to an American city for school or work to hear the gospel and then take the good news of Jesus back home to a formerly unreached area.

Jesus is doing that kind of thing in our age right now.

And it isn't only immigrants in the cities.

Cities concentrate enormous and rapidly increasing numbers of young adults and college students and the upcoming generation of men and women that will shape the world as we know it.

They also gather enormous and rapidly increasing numbers of the so-called cultural elites who will disproportionately shape our culture through their power in business, education, technology, media, publishing, entertainment, the arts.

It's not that their souls matter more than anyone else's, but reaching them can have an influence that extends far beyond them.

Cities also concentrate the bulk of the poor, the marginalized, and the vulnerable, whom Jesus repeatedly calls his people to see, love, and serve.

So just think for a second about what it is that is gathered together in a city like Philadelphia.

It's the nations, it's the next generation, it's the influential and powerful and the poor and the vulnerable.

There is tremendous need for the gospel there and tremendous opportunity.

If you want to reach the Arab Muslim world, the single biggest place and highest concentration of Arab Muslims outside of the Arab world itself is Dearborn, Michigan.

You could leave right now and be there tonight.

To reach the Yemenis and the Lebanese and the Syrians.

People are moving into cities, unlike ever before.

Meaning, if we wanted even one church for every 2,000 additional people in cities each year, we would need to plant about a thousand new city churches every single year just to keep pace with that growth.

Put plainly, the suburban church simply isn't keeping up.

And that's where ordinary Christians like us matter.

A city doesn't only need professional church planters.

A church plant needs Christians who will move into a neighborhood, become members, invite their neighbors, disciple new believers, teach children, practice hospitality, give generously, serve the poor, and spend 20, 30 years simply just being faithful in a different community.

You could help build the kind of church from which the gospel reaches an entire neighborhood and shapes an entire culture around you and reaches foreign nations all at once in ways you simply can't in Red Hill.

There's both tremendous need and tremendous opportunity for the gospel in cities.

And to build up the church in America and equip her to better reach the nations, we need to build up the church in the city.

Again, I'm not telling everybody to move this to the city.

That's not something that's in the Bible.

I'm just asking you to put it on the table before God and see if that's an option.

He might work in your heart.

Instead of first asking, where would I most like to live or where can I get the nicest house?

Consider asking where could my life be most useful for the kingdom of Christ.

The city or elsewhere, wherever he leads you.

The third practical way, I'm going to try to keep moving, I'm sorry.

The third practical way to contribute to the mission of Jesus and his church is to give financially toward that mission.

Romans 10 doesn't only say that somebody has to go, somebody has to send.

In fact, the book of Romans itself is a sort of missionary letter asking for financial support to fund the mission to Spain, to an unreached people of that day.

And one of the simplest ways that you can participate, one of the strongest ways you can participate in reaching a people that you may never personally visit, is to take some of what God has given you and put it behind someone who will go.

Think back again to Psalm 67.

Verse 6 says, The earth has yielded its increase.

God, our God, shall bless us.

This is a harvest song.

So the call for the worship of God to extend to all the nations in this psalm arises out of a physical harvest and the material blessing of God's people.

In other words, blessed to be a blessing means God gives his people material blessing for the sake of the world's spiritual blessing.

He gives a bountiful harvest here so that there might be a bountiful spiritual harvest of worshipers everywhere.

He gives us more than we need, not merely so we can continually increase our standard of living, but so that we can meet the world's greatest need, to know God through Jesus Christ.

That's the pattern we see throughout this Psalm, throughout history, from Adam to Abraham to Jesus to us.

God blesses us so that his saving power might be known among the nations.

So maybe one of the questions we should ask whenever God gives us more than we need is not simply what can I do with this, but who might God intend to bless through this?

With a particular focus on the unreached and the lost.

And maybe you aren't called to Papua New Guinea, but you can help support and send someone who is, and practically hands-on contribute to the mission of Christ there.

You could personally support him, or as a family, or another missionary, specifically laboring among unreached peoples, choose to devote a certain amount every month.

Your paycheck here can help put a Bible in someone's language and in someone's hands there.

And we can do this together as a church, not just individually.

I would love for us to become such a richly generous church that as our giving increases, we don't just find more things to spend it on ourselves, but we increasingly give it to frontier missions in unreached areas.

What if we all began giving beyond 10% tithe?

So that CBFC could devote 20, 30%, 40% of its budget to missions.

Churches do it, they do 50% to reaching the unreached, to planting more churches and putting more resources where Christ is not yet named.

What if part of the reason God has blessed us with so much is that we can give so much more away.

You may never preach the gospel in Papua New Guinea or Afghanistan or India or Algeria or Yemen, but through your generosity, you can help make sure somebody does.

If you want a helpful resource on how to support international missions, there's this teal book that will be in the back.

A couple copies of these left called How Can I Support International Missions?

A fourth practical way to contribute to the mission of Jesus and his church is to devote yourself to personal evangelism and discipleship.

Not everyone is called to leave.

Some of us are called to stay here and be faithful in building up the church here.

One of the first missionaries that Jesus sent was the Garrison demoniac in Mark 5, who begged to go with Jesus overseas.

And verse 19 says, Jesus did not permit him, but said to him, Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you.

That's what we see in the apostles, too.

There are some like Paul who go to Rome, and others like Thomas who go to India, and others like James who stay home in Jerusalem and build up Christ's church there.

So the church needs some of us here to share the gospel with our neighbor, to invite our co-workers to church, to disciple a younger believer in our home or in our school or at camp to teach Sunday school, to raise our children, to know and love Jesus, to serve his church and to help make CBFC and other local churches into healthy, mature, multiplying, sending bodies.

Remember why Paul could leave one place and move to another.

There was a church there now.

There were believers who could reach their neighbors and disciple their children and train leaders, give generously, and eventually send more.

So building up the church here is not a distraction from the nations, and it's not a second-tier calling.

Healthy churches and healthy Christians are the launching pads from which the nations are reached.

We evangelize here, we disciple here, we raise the next generation here, and from here we pray, give, train, and send.

The mission is global, but our faithfulness begins here.

If you want a resource on how to get started in evangelism, there's this brown book in the back called How Do I Get Started in Evangelism.

The fifth and final practical way we'll look at today to contribute to the mission of Jesus and his church is to pray earnestly.

Pray earnestly.

And please don't hear that as a small option tacked on the end for people who can't do the other four.

Prayer is how the mission moves forward.

Prayer is how the Lord's sovereign will for his kingdom is accomplished.

Prayer is essential to this mission.

Jesus looks out at the crowds in Matthew 9 and says, The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

And what does he say?

Go, preach, plant church?

No.

He says, The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

Before missionaries are sent, Jesus tells us to pray for missionaries and to pray for them to be sent.

Paul repeatedly asks churches to pray for him.

He says, Pray for us, that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored.

2 Thessalonians 3.

So we can pray that doors would open.

We can be praying, as Josh asked for last week, that Papua New Guinea and their government would accept his visa.

We can pray that the gospel would advance into new areas.

We can pray that God would give boldness.

Paul understood that the advance of the gospel ultimately depends not upon the brilliance, courage, money, or strategy of Christians, but upon the power of Jesus Christ, the Lord of the harvest.

And that brings us right back to where we started because Psalm 67 is itself not just a harvest prayer, but a missions prayer.

May God be gracious to us and bless us that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations.

What if we started praying that?

What if you chose an unreached people group and prayed for them every day?

Or fasted on the first of the month to devote that day to prayer for a persecuted group?

What if families prayed together around the dinner table for missionaries by name?

What if our children grew up regularly hearing us ask God to send missionaries and hearing us add, and Lord, if you want to send us, send us.

Pray for Josh.

Pray for the missionaries that we support as a church.

Pray for our cities.

Pray for your unbelieving neighbors, your children.

Pray for God to raise up missionaries from the church.

Pray for nations and peoples who have no Bible in their language.

Because the task is beyond us, but it is not beyond the Supreme Lord Jesus.

And perhaps the simplest and strongest place for every one of us to begin is prayer.

Let the peoples praise you, O God.

Let all the peoples praise you.

As we come now to the Lord's table, we get an incredible foretaste of the day coming soon when that prayer will finally be answered.

This meal points forward to another meal to come, the marriage supper of the Lamb, Revelation 19, where that innumerable multitude from every nation, every tribe, people, and language will feast with Christ in his new creation kingdom in everlasting life and joy together.

So as we drink and eat, we look backward to the price Jesus paid to bring us in for his great banquet feast, his body broken and his blood shed on the cross.

And we look forward to the day when we will feast with that innumerable multitude in his presence.

His house will be filled.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we ask that you would be with us now to guide us by your Holy Spirit with wisdom and with clarity as to your will for our lives.

We surrender all, Lord.

We commit ourselves into your hands to do with us as you please.

And we ask that you would stir in our hearts a conviction and an urgency and an earnesty to see the nations reached with the gospel, to see unbelievers in our own communities reached with the gospel.

That you would work a mighty and marvelous miracle in our day, that we would see with our eyes thousands of young new missionaries, of old new missionaries going to the nations, supported by your church, built up by your local body to reach all peoples.

May the peoples praise you, O Lord.

May all the peoples praise you.

We ask of all of these things in Christ's name for his glory.

Amen.

Thank you, Daniel.

We will now uh sing a song titled Facing a Task Unfinished.

It is uh it's sung to the common tune of Aurelia that is one we might never.