Discover the World: Missions Sunday

DISCOVER THE WORLD: MISSIONS SUNDAY
DR. JIM DIXON
FEBRUARY 14, 2010
GENESIS 3:16

Our nation is less than 250 years old, and yet it was more than 400 years ago, on July 22nd, in 1587, that Sir Walter Raleigh established a colony on Roanoke Island, just off the coast of what is now North Carolina. For Sir Walter Raleigh, this was the second colony started on Roanoke Island. Just two years earlier, he had attempted to start a colony there and it had failed. Many died from disease and illness. Those folks who survived went back to England on a ship captained by Sir Francis Drake. But Sir Walter Raleigh had brought this second colony to Roanoke Island and he was excited and he had every anticipation of a complete success. He had 117 settlers—91 men, nine children and 17 women. And just one month after arriving on Roanoke Island, a baby was born: Virginia Dare, the first person from England born on American soil.

She was the granddaughter of John White, who was the governor of this new colony. Now, just a few years passed, and in 1590 John White went back to England to get supplies and much needed equipment and materials and returned to Roanoke Island. When he returned, he was stunned. He was expecting to see a thriving community. He returned and nobody was there. His granddaughter was not there and his family not there. His friends were not there; no one there. All he could find were two words (or one word, really) carved into a tree: “Croatoan.” And then another tree there was the beginning of the same word, C-R-O. That’s all he could find.

Today, that colony is called The Lost Colony. In colleges and universities across this nation and in high school history classrooms across this nation and in courses in American history across this nation, it is called The Lost Colony. To this day, no one knows what happened to those 117 people. To this day, no one knows what happened to The Lost Colony. Some people think that perhaps they were attacked by hostile Indian nations and that maybe they died that way. They don’t know that. Some think that maybe they fell to disease and illness, but there were no graves that they were able to find on Roanoke Island. They just disappeared. Some people today think that maybe they were assimilated into some Indian nations. Some think that they were assimilated into the Croatoan Indians and to that group of people. Some think they were assimilated into the Hatteras Indian peoples and that ultimately that led to the formation of the Lumbee Indian Nation. The Lumbee Indians today are the largest Indian nation east of the Mississippi River, and their skin is lighter and some of them have blue eyes and many of them have names identical to the names of members of the Lost Colony.

So this is a great curiosity, but nobody knows the answer. But this we do know: in the sight of God, this whole planet is a lost colony. We know that for sure. The Bible makes that clear. In the sight of God, this whole planet is a lost colony. It was a colony planted in Eden, with the breath of God upon it. The colony was lost—lost to sin, separated from paradise, separated from God. So the world is lost today.

Now, that is why God sent His Son into the world, because the world is lost. God sent His Son into the world. Jesus said that He came to seek and to save the lost. That’s why Jesus told the parable of the lost coin. That’s why Jesus told the parable of the lost sheep, because humanity apart from Him is lost. That’s why John Newton wrote that great hymn, Amazing Grace. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I’m found. I was blind, but now I see.” And that’s why Jesus gave us this command in Acts 1:8, because the world is lost: “ When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you shall receive power and you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.” Because the world is lost. Now, this is not politically correct, but it is truth biblically: apart from Christ, this world is lost. So we have the Great Commission and we have the charge of Acts 1:8. So today we look at Acts 1:8, and I want us to look at it in three ways.

First of all, I want us to look at it pneumatologically. I’m sure you look at many things, pneumatologically. Pneumatology is the study of pneuma. But what’s pneuma? Well, pneuma is spirit, or breath. But in the context of this word, pneumatology, pneuma refers to the Holy Spirit. So Pneumatology is a study of the Holy Spirit. It’s a much-neglected field of Christian theology. Jesus tells us that the Great Commission given to His church cannot be accomplished without the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s all about the power of the Holy Spirit. “When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you shall receive power and you shall be My witnesses.”

In the movie The Apostle, Billy Bob Thornton plays a character who’s mad at this church. He goes and gets a bulldozer, and he comes and he’s going to just bulldoze this church down. He’s just going to destroy it. The pastor of the church is played by Robert Duvall. He places a Bible in front of the bulldozer so that Billy Bob will stop. There’s an amazing scene has to do with the Holy Spirit, and Robert Duvall talks to Billy Bob, saying that Billy Bob didn’t really come to knock down the church. Now, Billy Bob insists that he did, but Robert Duvall encourages him to reach out and touch the Bible on the ground, and gets down on the ground with him, and everyone is saying, “The Holy Ghost is here!” And Billy Bob admits that he didn’t come to knock the church down and accept Robert Duvall’s invitation to come to Jesus.

So he came to destroy the church, came to bulldozed it down, but he wound up converting. He wound up coming to faith and it was all because of the power of the Holy Ghost, the third person of the Trinity. The Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin and draws us to the Savior. When I came to Christ many years ago, the Holy Spirit convicted me of sin and drew me to the Savior. When you came to Christ, the Holy Spirit convicted you of sin and drew you to the Savior. This is the power of the Holy Spirit. That’s why this passage is all about pneumatology.

Now, you go into Acts chapter two, verses one through four, and you see Pentecost. You see the power of the Holy Spirit descend from heaven. The power of the Holy Spirit descends upon the company of believers, upon the 120 in Jerusalem, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit and they began to speak in tongues—“glossolalia.” But unlike most glossolalia that you see today, these were not heavenly languages. As the Holy Spirit fell upon the company of believers, they spoke the languages of the nations and people heard the gospel in their own tongue. People who were visiting Jerusalem from all over. Because the power of the Holy Spirit gave them this gift where they were able to literally speak different tongues. And you see, that’s why Acts chapter two, one through four, is tied to Acts 1:8. It’s tied to the charge to go into all the world, to be His witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth by the power of the Holy Spirit, which shall come upon you. Then in Acts two verses one through four, the Holy Spirit descends, and they’re given the languages of the nations, that they might be indeed His witnesses.

Right after Pentecost, later in Acts chapter two, beginning with verse 14, we see the first sermon in the Book of Acts, and it’s preached by Peter. Acts chapter two verses 14 through 41 is the sermon by the Apostle Peter and the Holy Spirit has come upon him. The Holy Spirit has filled him, and the Holy Spirit has empowered him, and he speaks in the power of the Holy Spirit. He witnesses in the power of the Holy Spirit. At the end of that sermon, 3,000 people accept Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

It’s the same today. Billy Graham was born in 1918. Billy Graham is almost 92 years old now, and very frail. Billy Graham began his ministry with YFC, Youth for Christ, and he did Youth for Christ International Crusades in England and London, and then in the United States and the Americas. He was convicted by Christ that his call was crusades and that he was to be a witness for Jesus in the format of crusades. In 1949, he had his first big crusade in the city of Los Angeles in an outdoor tent with a revival atmosphere. Thousands of people came to faith in Jesus Christ. I’ve been at Billy Graham crusades. The last time he was in LA I was a counselor at that crusade. We had 150,000 people in the La Memorial Coliseum. They flooded the field as well as the bleachers, and 50,000 more were outside the La Memorial Coliseum because there was not room for them inside. When Billy Graham spoke, tens of thousands of people accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior.

Have you ever wondered, how does that happen? His message is so simple. I mean, the message that Billy Graham gives is always so simple. It’s, “Jesus loves you. You’re a sinner, but He loves you and He’s died for you. Come to Him. Let Him forgive you. Let Him give you eternal life. You may have come on a bus today. They’ll wait.” You know the message. You’ve all heard the message. And people just rise by tens of thousands. How does that happen? The Holy Spirit. “When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you shall receive power and you shall be My witnesses.” It is today, as it always has been, the power of the Holy Spirit as we go forth as witnesses.

I love the story of George Smith. George Smith was a Moravian missionary. I’ve read his story many times in many places. I first read about him in a book by Robert Schuller. To understand George Smith, you have to understand the Moravian missionary movement, the Moravians loved Christ. They sent missionaries all over the world and they believed that their missionary activity had to be bathed in prayer, seeking the power of the Holy Spirit.

So 12 men and 12 women got together—24 Moravian Christians—and they made a covenant that they would pray until they died and that they would seek someone else to take their place. So each of the 24 took an hour a day. 12 men and 12 women, each took an hour a day and, without ceasing, day after day after day, they prayed so that prayer was 24/7. There was never a moment when this prayer would stop. When they died, other Moravians took their place. This prayer meeting, historians tell us, went on for over 100 years. It was prayer for the power of the Holy Spirit as they went forth as His missionaries.

At the beginning of that hundred year prayer meeting, George Smith went forth to Africa. He was one of the earliest ever to go there into what was then called the Dark Continent. He struggled to learn the languages and the dialects. His time there was brief. He did not know it, but his life would be brief. He came down with a horrible illness and he had to go home. And before he left, only one person had accepted Christ. He got on that ship and he died before getting home.

You might think, well, where is the power of the Holy Spirit in that? But you see, the prayer meeting was still going on. And when they went back into that part of Africa, decades and decades later, what did they find? 12,000 Christians that came through the one convert of George Smith, the Moravian missionary. By the power of the Holy Spirit, a domino effect occurred as one person witnessed to another person who witnessed to another person who witnessed to another person. It was all by the power of the Holy Spirit.

There’s a story I’ve told many times, and I love the story because it honors the Lord. I don’t like the story because it dishonors me. But it’s true. It took place at the DMV, the Department of Motor Vehicles. I was in a very, very bad mood that day. I’ve never been at the DMV when I wasn’t in a very, very bad mood. The lines were long, and I was told it would be a long wait, but take a chair. They had rows of chairs just set up. There must have been 20 people waiting, sitting in chairs, but there were maybe a hundred chairs (this was out in Aurora). I found a place where nobody was, in the back row. Nobody was sitting in that region. Nobody was within three rows of the seat I chose, because I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I just wanted to grump and grouse.

So I sat there and I see this guy who obviously has been told he’s going to wait a long time and to take a chair. I see him looking around and I’m thinking, well, he has plenty of chairs. Then I see him come right up to my row and he looks down the row towards me and just starts walking towards me, and he sits right next to me. I felt, like, invaded. I was not friendly and I was rude. I mean, it wasn’t like I said something mean, I just didn’t say anything. He began to talk to me. He didn’t know me. I didn’t know him, but he was just really talkative. He wanted to talk. He started telling me about himself. All my answers were short and clipped. “Yes,” “No,” the shortest answer I could give. Then he began to tell me what he did for a living. And I thought, “Oh no, he’s going to ask me what I do for a living.”

And he did. He asked me what I do for a living. And I told him, “Well, I’m a pastor a minister.” He said, “What kind of pastor?” And I said, “Well, I’m a grumpy pastor…” no, I said, “I’m a Christian pastor.” He just was silent for a while. And then he said, “You know, this is amazing.” I could see he was very moved. He said, “I’ve been thinking about becoming a Christian, but I don’t know how. Could you help me?” And right there in the DMV, he gave his heart to Jesus Christ and ask Jesus to be his Lord and Savior.

Now I can tell you, and you know it’s true, it had nothing to do with me. It was all in spite of me, nothing to do with me. It was all the power of the Holy Spirit. Do you understand? “When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you shall receive power.” It’s all the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s the Holy Spirit that led him there that time at that day. And it was the Holy Spirit that gave him the wait. It was the Holy Spirit that had him see me down the row and had him go down that row. It was the Holy Spirit that led him to sit right next to me. It was the Holy Spirit that made him so talkable. It was the Holy Spirit that orchestrated the whole thing and brought him right into eternal life and the kingdom of heaven. That day I asked for his phone number. I told him I would call him, which I did. A couple of weeks later, I called him and he was walking with Christ and he had found a church. It’s a church with a friendly pastor. But it was all the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s all about the pneumatology. “When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will receive power and you shall be my witnesses.”

So I want you to do something today. I want you to go home and pray for the power of the Holy Spirit. I know, if you’re a believer, if you’ve accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you already have the Holy Spirit living in you. I know that Jesus indwells us by His Holy Spirit, but have you ever prayed for more of the power of the Holy Spirit to be released in your life, that you might serve the cause of heaven on earth, that you might be His witnesses? Would you do that today? So much is at stake.

Now, I want to take another look at this verse, and it’s not just about pneumatology, but Christology. This verse is not just about the Holy Spirit. This verse is about Christ. Because Jesus said, “When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you shall receive power and you shall be My witnesses.” It’s all about Christ. We witness regarding Him. We tell the world about Him. It’s all about Christ, and the word for witness, there is the word “martyres.” That means witness. But we get an English word from this Greek word, martyres. And what is the English word? The word martyr. What are Christian martyrs? Those who die for the faith; those who die witnessing; those who die for Christ. “You shall be my witnesses unto death, no matter what the cost.” You shall be my witnesses.

So we witness to Christ. And how glorious is Christ? Have you heard of a Christophany? You know what a Christophany is? A Christophany is a corporeal manifestation of the Son of God. That’s a Christophany—not the incarnation that was the Son of God becoming flesh, but a Christoph is other possible appearances of Christ. So you go to the Old Testament, in Genesis 14, and you read about a guy named Melchizedek, king of Salem, perhaps a primitive name for Jerusalem. He meets Abraham the patriarch. You also read about this mysterious person Melchizedek in Hebrews chapter seven. Hebrews chapter seven, beginning with verse one, says these words: “Now, this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him. And to him he apportioned a 10th portion of everything, for he is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness. And he is also king of Salem, that is, king of peace. He has neither beginning of days nor end of life, neither mother nor father, nor beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God, he continues forever.” See how great he is? Abraham the patriarch gave him a tithe of the spoils. This is amazing language and very mysterious stuff.

Was Melchizedek a Christophany? We don’t know, but he might’ve been Jesus. He could have been a type of Christ, or could have been Christ himself. He could be Jesus appearing in the Old Testament times, in the time of Abraham. Remember when Jesus was talking to the Pharisees about Abraham, telling them about Abraham? And they said, well, You’re not even 30 years old. How do You know what Abraham thinks and what Abraham would think? And Jesus made this statement: “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham ever was, I Am.” And He took the Tetragrammaton, the name of God, and applied it to Himself. He was there. He’s always been there, always. Was He there in the Old Testament? Yeah, you bet. He’s the eternal Son of God. He did not begin at Bethlehem. He simply came into the world at Bethlehem. But He is the eternal Son of God. And we tell the world about Him. We are His witnesses.

So we learn of Him that we might witness concerning Him. And we tell the world of His incarnation and how He loved us so much He came into our world and took our flesh upon Himself. We tell the world about His sinless life. Though He was tempted in every way as we are, He did not sin, that He might be the perfect lamb of God and the perfect sacrifice. We tell the world about His atoning death, how He died for the sin of the world in substitutionary atonement. He died in my place. He died in your place. He died in everyone’s place. We tell the world about Jesus. We tell them about His resurrection. Death could not hold Him and He rose in power and glory. We tell the world about His ascension, that He’s ascended into heaven. He is at the right hand of His Father. He intercedes for His people. We tell the world He’s coming again. He will come again in power and glory, and all of His angels with Him. He will judge the nations and He will receive His people unto Himself. We tell the world He is Savior and He is Lord. We are His witnesses. And this is the call of Christ upon us.

Here’s a quote from the movie Something to Sing About: “One thing I want you to remember is that God loves you no matter who you are. Whatever the color of your skin, whatever your ethnic background, whatever you’ve done, however bad or good you’ve been, God loves you. The Bible says, “Ye, I’ve loved thee with an everlasting love.” Think of it: when you were doing those bad things, God loved you. Whatever you’re going through, son, God can turn it around. If you believe it, wash your hands.”

What’s that all about? It’s all about witnessing. It’s all about witnessing. That’s why Billy Graham was always preaching at crusades and preaching on TV and witnessing. The elderly woman who said the quote from Something to Sing About was all about witnessing. And that’s what we need to be about. That’s what God is saying to us today. “The time is short and it’s all about witnessing.” The world’s lost, and we have this call upon us: “When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you shall receive power and you shall be My witnesses here and everywhere.”

There’s one other thought as we conclude concerning this verse, and that has to do not with pneumatology or Christology, but with eschatology. This verse has to do with eschatology. It has to do with the eschaton. It has to do with the end times, the last things. Just before Acts 1:8, this whole verse is introduced by a question put to Jesus about when His kingdom is going to come. When is the eternal kingdom going to be established? Then right after Jesus makes this charge to us to witness for Him in the power of the Holy Spirit all over the world, He ascends into heaven and two angels appear and they say, “Do not marvel. He’s going to come again in the same way that you have seen Him go.” So the whole context of this verse is eschatology. I want you to understand that the time is short.

The time is short, shorter now than ever before as the day increasingly and ever draws near. So we have Matthew 24:14, where Jesus makes this statement: “This gospel of My kingdom must be preached to all the world and testimony must be given to all peoples. Then and only then the end shall come.” It’s an amazing verse. So we have to take the gospel to the nations, to the world, to all peoples before the end can come.

Now, what does it mean to take the gospel to all peoples? There’s a lot of people in the world. When Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees 4,000 years ago, there were only 100 million people on the earth—about one third of the population of the United States of America. That’s all that existed on the whole earth 4,000 years ago. 3,000 years ago, when David ascended the throne in Israel, 120 million people were on the earth. So a thousand years had passed, and the earth’s population had grown by 20 million. A thousand years later, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. 2,000 years ago Jesus was born in Bethlehem and 140 million people were on the earth. So another thousand years had passed and only another 20 million people were added in terms of the growth of earth population.

A thousand years after that, about the time that Leif Erikson allegedly arrives in the new world, 250 million people were on the earth. About 500 years ago, in 1492 when Christopher Columbus arrived in the new world, there were 450 million. And it really wasn’t until Sutter’s Mill, in 1848, 162 years ago, that the population of this earth reached 1 billion. And of course, today, the population has increased virtually exponentially. As we’re approaching 7 billion people, there are 6.8 billion people on the earth now. Is the charge of Christ that we take the gospel to every one of them?

Not really. I mean, that’s our hearts’ desire, but that’s not really the charge of Christ. He says that we must give testimony to Him to all peoples. But the word peoples is the word “ethnos.” And ethnos originally meant “multitudes” In the time of Christ, it meant “people groups.” Later it would come to mean nations. But in the time of Christ, it meant people groups. So you must be His witness to all people groups. And we know that people groups referred to people with their own culture and their own language. A people group is a people with their own culture and their own language. So you have to take the gospel to every people group, every culture, and every language must, before the end can come, receive witness to Christ.

So how are we doing? The task is hard. Take Indonesia. We have many ministries in Indonesia, and through our missions and outreach department support many causes and missionaries. And many of you have gone with us to Indonesia and Sumatra. Remember, Indonesia’s huge. It’s the fourth largest nation on the earth. I don’t know whether you knew that. It has 13,500 islands spread out over 3,000 miles along the equator. And on Sumatra there is a people group called the Batak. They’re 8 million in number. They have their own culture, they have their own language, and we have reached them as witnesses and we’ve shared with them the gospel. 5 million Batak are nominally Christian out of the eight, and 2 million are committed Christians. In fact, just after the last service, a wonderful young man from Sumatra, Indonesia, came up to me afterwards and wanted to introduce himself. He’s a Batak and he loves Christ. But understand this: in Sumatra there are 54 unreached people groups. Just on the island of Sumatra, there are 54 unreached people groups with our own cultures and their own languages. And we haven’t even reached them.

In Indonesia as a whole, there are more than 275 languages and a greater number of cultures and ethnicities. That’s just Indonesia. We look at the globe and the task is massive. It’s massive, and the call is great. You think we don’t need you? Out in the atrium we have our mission’s outreach fair today, and Gene has been talking to us from the atrium. I want you to go out there. Please, take the time. Go out there and check it out. Over 3,000 of you in our congregation have gone with us to the mission field. Over 3,000 of you have gone on a short-term mission strip, Discover the World. We need all of you to do it. The task is so great. We want to take the love of Christ and the message of Christ and the person of Christ to the whole world because He is Savior and Lord and this is charge He has given us. We want the power of His Holy Spirit. We want to be His faithful witnesses and we want to do it at home and everywhere. So please, go into the atrium and check it all out in.

Revelation seven, the Bible guarantees us that when we get to heaven and this age of the world is done, we will see people from every culture and every language in heaven, believers from every culture and every language. Go back and read Revelation chapter seven. It is promised, we’re told in Revelation 14. You know that at the very end before judgment day one of three angels will come and suspend himself in mid space and he will proclaim the gospel to every culture and language. That’s Revelation 14. One way or another, this thing is going to get done. It is true, but understand this: the charge is laid upon us and He’s looking for faithfulness.

The charge is laid upon us and He’s looking for faithfulness. So as we close this morning, I want to encourage you to seek the power of the Holy Spirit. I want to encourage you to be witnesses for Christ in your neighborhood and with your friends and at work, and yes, in other parts of the world. We want to encourage you to be witnesses for Christ. We are His witnesses, and the time is short. Let’s look to the Lord with a word prayer.