Transcript

We’ve been using, ah, a will illustration for well over three decades to illustrate how from the Scriptures we have organized our function as a local church. As I said earlier, we don’t want to be mildly biblical or a little biblical, we want to be thoroughly biblical because years ago when I became your senior pastor, I thought, well, what would it look like if we were just thoroughly scriptural in what we did, so we came up with this will and in the center is the first strategy, preaching the word, congregational worship, preaching the word in the congregational worship service is the centerpiece, it’s the foundation stone, it is the hub of the wheel. If it is not right, nothing else matters. Church, whatever else you pray for and whatever else you strive for in your church, pray for faithful, Spirit-empowered preaching of the word.

Building out of that, we have, um, the first Strategy Statement, every member missions or every member ministry, I should say, through small groups. That’s up to the right, ah, where the totality of church life kind of flows out of that. Actually, small groups is where we live out what we’ve learned from the preaching of the word. If we’re not real in small groups, then we’re not really real as Christians. Ah, that’s where your Christianity has shoe-leather, so to speak.

And then we come to the third one, the one up on the top left, personalized strategic world missions and that’s where we will be today, but I’m changing that to no longer say personalized strategic, though that’s very weightily in there, but to call it local church- centered missions. I’m gonna talk about that in a moment.

The fourth one is family discipleship. I don’t even do a session on that one because there’s not a lot in the Scripture on it. I think I’ll develop one soon, but the simpler point is it needs to be real at home. Ah, just as you rise up in the morning and walk along the way and sit by the side and lie down at night, as Deuteronomy says, speak these things. It needs to be real in the home.

And then in the outside rim, Spirit-empowerment, Spirit-empowerment because you can dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s and be thoroughly biblical but if the Spirit of God is not empowering it, giving this life, then it’s dead ritual, but when all of that is together, then the outside of the rim by God glorifying local church, then around the bottom, God uses as a pattern for others and that’s where we are as God continues to give us opportunities to teach these things among others.

So now we come to Strategy Statement #3: Local Church-Centered Missions, and here’s the way that reads now. I’ve edited it somewhat. The entire church family involved in local church-centered missions, now the next phrase, I, I, I dealt with the grammarians in my life and they didn’t like it exactly, but I decided I would make English grammar serve my theology and not the other way around, following a biblically sound personalized and strategic approach for the glory of God among all peoples. Really it changes nothing but I think it, the verbiage is a little better for what we want to accomplish. So we’ll be building off of that and pulling the Scriptures in as we go. Pray that God would give you an understanding. Pray that God would kindle your heart about these truths as we are striving to – now listen – do God’s work, God’s way, for God’s glory. Not God’s work, our way, for God’s glory. God’s work, God’s way, or excuse me, for God’s glory.

Now, I., as we unpackage this a phrase at a time: the entire local church family or the entire church family. That means missions should involve in some capacity every single church member. In the typical Baptist church, missions is seen as, “Well, we have a missions committee that does that.” Or, “We have a missions board over there in Richmond, Virginia. Southern Baptists have an international mission board over there and that’s what they do.” No, that’s totally wrong. The New Testament bears out very thoroughly missions work is to be the work of the totality of the local church family. Matter of fact, the first missions movement was birthed in a local church and the entire church was involved.

Acts 13:1-3, and the church is just getting going, the word has spread to Antioch, there’s a church there now and it says, ” Now there were at Antioch, in the church that was there, prophets and teachers: Barnabas, and Simeon who was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. While they,” that’s the church, “were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.'” Now notice verse 3, “Then, when they,” the local church, not a board, not a mission society but a local church, “when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they,” the local church, “sent them away.” With, with, with the best of intentions, Baptists have gotten upside down on this. Ah, in our Baptist denominations we send a guy off to school, we send him to the mission board and then they send him out. Now usually there’s some sort of formula where the church kinda backs that up, but it’s really inverted. We may use mission boards and societies but everything about missions is about local church-centeredness. It comes out of a local church. From the, the Jerusalem church, we know that Peter and Philip were scattered out among the area and, and in one sense you could say, “Well, the persecutions sent them out from the Jerusalem church,” yes, but nevertheless they went out from a local church, the entire local church was involved.

Now back to our text here in Acts 13:1-3, it’s interesting that in verse 2 it says and the Spirit sent them out, and then it says in verse 3 the church sent them out, but that’s the way it outta be, the Holy Spirit working in the hearts of a man, a woman, a, a, a family and they feel led to go do a certain work, or led to come to the church leadership and say, “We would like to serve the Lord in another place where there needs to be more churches.” So the Spirit is guiding and then the church affirms that.

Ah, Jamieson, Fausett and Brown calls this the double call, the Spirit and the church. It’s the biblical standard of all who are called into Gospel ministry. God the Spirit leads them, the holy church affirms that leadership to that work. Now the point I’m making here is that the entire church is involved in this and you find no other formula in the New Testament. So we don’t see a mission agency, we don’t see a mission board. I’m not saying those are wrong or evil, I just think, again every time we develop something outside of what the Scripture gives us, it’s inevitable that that something begins to get out of balance and upside down.

Now II. So we’re talking about the entire church family involved in local church-centered missions. Now we note also that the very first missionaries went out and as they did their work, they remained accountable to their local church. We see this, um, all through the, the New Testament in, in, in fact. Ah, matter of fact, the entire New Testament missions enterprise is continually seen to be out of and to the end of establishing or establish and establishing local churches. In Acts 11, we have Peter who’s gone out to the Gentile world and he’s preaching to Jews and Gentiles and we see him coming back to the local church at Jerusalem, giving an account of the effectiveness of his ministry, and as Paul and Barnabas were sent out from the local church at Antioch, we find in Acts 14:24-28, they come back. Notice it says, “They passed through Pisidia and came into Pamphylia. When they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia. From there they sailed to Antioch,” there’s their local church they went out from, “from which they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had accomplished.” Verse 27, “When they had arrived and gathered,” who? The board? The society? The agency? No, “When they had gathered the church together, they began to report all things that God had done with them and how He had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. And they spent a long time with the disciples.” So they went out from the church in Antioch, sent out under their authority and with their blessing. They go into all of these cities preaching the Gospel. God is giving them Gospel fruit. Then they come back and report back to the local church and they’re saying, “Here’s what’s going on on the mission field. Here’s what we’re seeing God do around the world.” So this was the first true church conference as the missionaries come in and report and that’s what we do every year during our world missions conference, we call it a True Church Conference now, as these brothers and sisters come together and report all that’s going on.

And then a third example in Acts 15, we find that as the Gospel is going out beyond the Jewish regions and the Gospel is going out into the non-Jewish or the Gentile world, and lo and behold to the shock of a lot of Israelites, God is saving non-Jews. God is bringing non-Jews, i.e. Gentiles into the faith. And so there was a lot of dissension about, “Now what are we gonna do about this?” Because the strong belief was when the Messiah would come you would first have to become a Jew, then receive the Messiah. Well, we know that’s a lie. That’s not true. Gentiles come straight to God through Jesus Christ. They don’t have to go through Israel to get there.

And so there’s a dissension here, so what does Peter and these guys do in this dissension? Well, they bring the problem back to the local church at Jerusalem. They don’t bring the Bible to the mission, the problem to the mission agency, they don’t bring the dissension issue to a missions board or a society , not that that’s always evil or wrong, but the Bible example is they bring it back to the local church from which they went out of, and we find in Acts 15, to save time, I don’t have time to read all the texts and unpack it, Paul and Barnabas, for example, come back and the apostles and the elders are there, Peter, an elder and leader in the church at that time, and James who is considered the lead pastor of the local church in Jerusalem, begin to talk about, “Here’s how we should handle this.” And they said, “Okay,” they’ve come up with a decision of how this is gonna work, the Gentile believers will have to do a couple of things but they’re free from most of the law of Israel, and then they send a delegation with Paul and Barnabas from the local church at Jerusalem so it will have authority.

Listen to me, folks, there is no authority on earth in God’s work higher than a local church. We don’t answer to the denomination. That’s why I think Southern Baptists had the right idea in the beginning when they formed what they called the Southern Baptist Convention. It was simply a voluntary cooperation of independent Baptist churches so we might pool our resources and do missions better. That’s a good idea because they understood there is no hierarchy higher than the local church. We can’t form a denominational agency and now answer to that. That’s heresy. But we can get together and cooperate. Now over the years so many of the churches in our cooperation have become weak if not clearly unbiblical, so it’s making cooperation strained or in our case, we’re almost completely blackballed because we’re too biblical. That’s just the truth. If I say it any other way, I’d be lying. It’s just the truth. So the cooperation has gotten muddy though the idea of cooperating is good because you can’t form an organization and then submit to it. There is no organization higher than local churches.

So to clear up this dispute, even the esteemed Apostle Paul goes to a local church elder board and under the local church elders decides how to fix the problem. That’s biblical. Now what am I saying? Local church-centered missions. Are you getting it, church? You getting what I’m saying? Bible teaches local church-centered missions, and we know from the Scriptures that the whole task of the early missionaries was to plant and strengthen local churches. Acts 14:23, and “When they had appointed elders for them in every church, having prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed.” Here’s the Apostle Paul circling back through the churches that had been started, further strengthening them, organizing their leadership, appointing elders, etc.

So biblical missions is of and through local churches to the end of planting more local churches and strengthening existing churches. That’s what missions is. Now I know there’s a lot of people who do a lot of things other than this, I’m not saying I’m against that, I certainly don’t want to demean them, I’m just saying from the New Testament example, everything is local church-centered. Everything. You can’t find anything else. That’s why in our Strategy Statement for missions, if we’re gonna be thoroughly scriptural, saturated in Scripture, we begin with the phrase: the entire church family involved in local church-centered missions. Not this kind of missions work, that kind of missions work, and that kind of mission church, work, plus local churches, but local churches is the center of all of it.

Now, “Pastor, would we do other things?” Yeah, when we get done with that one, we’ll do other stuff. When we get churches planted and strengthened to every people group in all of the world, we’ll take a time out and think about something else to do. Amen? Stay with what the Bible says is the primary task.

So we might ask ourselves again, how much of our priority is missions to God? Well, you see, everything in a local church should be to the end of greater and truer missions work. You see, here at Grace Life Church, we do not have a missions program. At Grace Life Church, we exist for missions. As you live out true biblical small group ministries, every member ministry, as you live out true biblical congregational worship, as you live out true biblical evangelism, etc. etc., then you as a church become an agent, an entity God will use to help others and help plant other churches and strengthen other churches. All that we are exists to the end of reproduction and multiplication all centered around the local church.

A prayer that we began to pray many years ago, Psalm 67:1-2 and verse 7 is a great prayer for you to remember about our church, especially I pray, you, you’d remember this prayer as I’m going to Brazil to preach to these pastors. “God be gracious to us and bless us,” that means here in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, for us, “And cause His face to shine upon us– That Your way may be known on the earth, Your salvation among all nations. God blesses us,” here locally, “That the ends of the earth may fear Him.” Isn’t that a great prayer? “God, bless this work here. Make this right and true and sound and biblical and God-centered and God-glorifying to the end that You would cause it to be reproduced and be an impact for God around the world.” I don’t what better to give my life to than that.

So we want God to bless us locally so that he might be pleased to use us globally. Now, I, I’m gonna say this because it’s just so true, one of the best things many local churches could do is get off the mission field. One of the best things many local churches could do is get off the mission. Why? Because if they reproduce what they’re doing here over there, they’re only hurting the, the effort over there. You need to have a degree of fidelity and trueness here to reproduce it there. Some of you guys, you build houses and stuff. Well, if you’re gonna build a house, we need to see one you’ve done before we want to say, “Let’s do some more.” Or whatever your business is, you want to do it well before you try to reproduce it. And somehow in the church we take the sloppiest, most shallow, most carnal, most biblically anemic things and then transport them around the world, and I’ve found years and years ago one of the greatest problems on the mission field was American cultural Christianity that had been imported all over the world and you’d have to go and rebuke that and get the Bible out.

We had this visions, Vision Statement for our church that we voted to adopt many years ago that says that we, Grace Life Church of the Shoals, would be a biblical church God might use as a model for others. He’s letting us realize the answer to that prayer so we need to continue to give our very best efforts to be faithful at this task God has given us.

Psalm 96:3 reminds us, “Tell of His glory among the nations, His wonderful deeds among all the peoples.” The point is missions is a great and high priority to God and then the only command that I know of that God’s given in five books of the New Testament, now he words it differently but in essence it’s the same command in five books of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts, and he says, “Go into all the world and make disciples.” He says, “Go and preach My Gospel to all nations.” The point is, “Do My missions work to the ends of the earth.”

So this command was not given to a missions agency, this command was not given to a missions society, this command was given to a local body of believers.

3. Following a biblically personalized approach. The local church family involved in local church-centered missions following, now how are we gonna do this? With a biblically personalized approach. Now by personalization I mean we get our hands on it. We take responsibility for it. We assume that we’re gonna support these people and know these people and, and, and stand with them in the, in the, in the sense that if they’re going down into the well, we’ll hold the rope. It’s personal. It means ownership and responsibility of missions.

Now that’s in, ah, in contrast to what sometimes we call an institutionalized approach to missions. An institutionalized approach is to say, “Well, we’ve got this board over there and we’ve got this society over there, and we’ll send them some money and they’ll do it for us.” Well, sending them money is not wrong, we still do that but we’re not gonna do that in the place of us doing missions ourselves.

Personalized. Imagine how personalization helped in the early church as that first church, the church at Jerusalem, after Peter went out and preached and he reports back all these people getting saved, even among the Gentiles. Matter, they knew Peter. This was very real to them and it, it so blessed them and encouraged them. It was personalized. Now imagine how it felt at Antioch, the local church at Antioch when they sent out Paul and Barnabas and they go to all of those cities and then they report back at Antioch how God had blessed the preaching of the Gospel. That church knew Paul and Barnabas personally so it was very personalized to them. Unfortunately, to the average confessing Christian today, missions is more associated with an institution than with a person like Paul or Barnabas or a place.

Now three thoughts on how we generally personalize missions here at Grace Life Church of the Shoals. First of all and you’ve just done this by adoption in small groups. Every small group adopts, I don’t know how many missionaries you adopt, 1-3 or so, and that’s the missionary you’re to especially contact, keep up with, encourage, pray for, send them care packages, sometimes you send them money, etc. etc. etc. And then in, then in our small groups we also periodically do lessons on world missions. And so to you when you contact these guys, they come in for the True Church Conference and, and you have meals with them and you get to know them, missions isn’t a board somewhere, it’s someone you know serving somewhere. It’s very personalized.

So adoption in small groups, secondly, absorption into the pulpit. I, I don’t have to try to remember to do this, it’s just gonna come out of my preaching that everything we are and all that we are about is to the end of God might use us to reproduce it other places. And, and, and I’m just gonna tell you this because I preach this and teach this to all of our church plants and partners of churches, and that is the number 1 missionary that we send out is Jeff Noblit, just like the number 1 missionary in the New Testament was the Apostle Paul, taking that message. If, if, if we can live it and if we can extend it out, but it’s gotta be real in the pulpit. Missions, church planting, again, is not something we do, it’s the purpose for which we exist and a local church that does not strive to be biblically, spiritually healthy to the end of reproducing other churches is not a church that’s MIA, missing in action, it’s MII, missing in inaction. The whole reason for you to be biblically sound is you might reproduce that in other places, that you might be a blessing and an encouragement to spread the Gospel, plant churches or strengthen existing churches.

A third way we personalize missions is through our annual missions, I’m calling it a homecoming event because that’s what it’s become. Ah, we have, we have a number of people who come to our conference who just come to learn and they’re not really tied in yet, but a whole lot of them soon become tied in, they become part of the extended Anchored in Truth missions family, and so when all of those guys come in again, it’s such a blessing and, again, it reminds me of when Paul and Barnabas had done their first missions tour, they’d go back to Antioch and there they report to the local church all that God is doing. We take them to eat when they come here. They stay in our homes. They report on the work from the pulpit. It’s personalized.

Now personalization has two key fruits. Now there’s many others but when missions is personalized versus institutionalized, there are two key fruits. Number 1: inspiration. There’s just something that stirs our hearts afresh. We’re inspired to pray more, to give more, to stand with that guy and encourage that guy or that family. We’re, we’re, we’re inspired to go maybe on a short-term trip to bless them and hold their arms up in work. It just renews our hearts about God’s task around the world.

Now listen to me, church, this is a fire in my bones today but when I first started, it wasn’t necessarily a fire in my bones, I just did it because the Bible said to. Have you learned that you do truth and then your emotions get behind it? You commit to truth as an act of the will and then your emotions come and get into it. And the same way with church life today, we don’t need to design the church so that the average carnal professing Christian has fun when he comes in here. No, we want to so preach the Bible to them until they grow in Christ to where they’re attracted to what God’s attracted to, they’re excited about what God’s excited about. Church shouldn’t be a cleaner version of the world’s entertainment, it should transcend that, it’s better than that.

Anyway, inspiration. We’re inspired about further and deeper missions involvement and I might add that, ah, Brother Steve worked this up some time ago that, ah, in the 10 years before we adopted this purpose statement and began to revolutionize how we approached missions, we’d given about $45,000 to world missions. In the 20 or so years since then, we’ve given almost $8 million to world missions and that’s above our regular tithes. Why? We’ve been inspired to get in on it and be a part.

Inspiration but also mobilization. God just seems to mobilize laborers and workers. Now Dr. Randy and Linda P. went out from us to China, worked among an unreached people group there. Kevin M. out of our church. He was a college student, been in Brazil now for 17 years. Tim and Donna A. were over in the Ukraine. Stephen and Cindy J. in Taiwan. These are folks out of our church. Kenan P. who’s home on furlough, he’s in Colombia. Brother Chad H. up in Hastings, Nebraska, Grace Life Church plant up there. Brother Blake K. in Manitoba, a church plant there. Brother Seth C., Des Moines, Iowa, a church plant out there. Brother Josh T. in Pittsburgh, a church plant up there. What am I saying? Mobilization of laborers. This is the natural result when you’re biblically personalized in your world missions. And then there are many others, and then the extension of those who’ve come and, ah, ah, linked to us like Tim A. there in Manila who now has 22 church plants all a part of Anchored in Truth body of missions around the world.

IV. We’ve talked about how the entire church family is involved in local church-centered missions, not just missions stuff generally but specifically what the Bible says, local church-centered missions, following a biblically personalized and biblically strategic approach. So from the Scriptures we learned it ought to be personal and local church- centered but also from the Scriptures we need to have a biblical strategy of how we do the work.

Well, what did, what did Jesus do? When it came to doing missions work or supporting missions work, what did Jesus do? Well, the same thing the Apostle Paul did. Jesus and the Apostle Paul trained other pastors and that’s the primary thing you can do is train other pastors because if you get a pastor right, he’ll impact thousands by the time he’s gone. You, that’ll be so multiplied and the Bible teaches us very clearly a couple of key verses here, Mark 3:14, I love this verse, as Jesus trained his 12 disciples and the remnant that hung around with them, notice it says, ” And He appointed twelve, so that they would,” don’t miss these three words, “be with Him.” It doesn’t say that they would go the university and study theology. That’s not bad, there’s good in that. It doesn’t say that they would go to a Bible college. That’s not bad but that’s not what it says. That they might be with him, in other words, he trained them on the job. Jesus said there was in incarnational aspect to training his leaders. They went along with him and did the ministry with him, along with classroom type instruction, and that’s what we hope to develop in our pastoral training institute where guys will come and then incarnationally live out and see and experience biblically healthy church life and a complement to that, get the classroom instruction on theology and other things.

Jesus never had any idea of increasing our intellect concerning doctrine without guiding our footsteps by the doctrine. As Luke writes the, ah, New Testament book of Acts, he said, “The first, the first thing I wrote to you in my first account was about all that Jesus began to do and teach.” Notice the order. Living it out and also teaching it. That’s why you need to be faithful in your small group. You need to live out Christianity, the loving, the caring, the equipping, the encouraging, the correcting, the reproving, the evangelizing together so that you’re doing Gospel ministry, not just teaching stuff.

Can I say something to you? Your Sunday school class is not your little church and if it is, I’ll bust it up. Try me and see. It’s not your little church. It’s not your little kingdom. It’s a part of a church and it’s primarily there so that you guys can do ministry together and teach the word of God. That modeling aspect is so key.

John 17:6 Jesus says, “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.” His point is, “You gave Me these men and I took them with Me and did the work of the ministry and through that lifestyle application, incarnational modeling, they learned how to do ministry.” So as Jesus dies on the cross, he’s buried, he appeared to his disciples, then he ascends back up into heaven, those men knew what to do. The same way with the Apostle Paul as he tells Timothy, he says, “Timothy, the things you’ve heard from Me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men who will then impact others.” So whatever else we do, training pastors, training leaders is a biblical pattern and a biblical way to do this.

Alright, let me go to the second thought here. Not only training leaders but producing biblically and spiritually healthy local churches. That’s what we ought to be about. We ought to be looking around the world. Right now we’ve had this unique opportunity, I’ll talk about it a little bit more in a moment, to Brazil, a unique door of opportunity where we have, ah, Kevin been down there for, what, 17 years. He’s vetted these guys. They’re quality guys but they need some help. That’s exactly the kind of thing we’re looking for because we can help them hopefully by God’s grace, have more biblically spiritually healthy local churches. And here, here’s the point about all of this: a healthy church, a mature church reproduces. A mature anything that once it matures, it reproduces and that’s what we want to happen.

In Titus, what do you have in Titus? Paul leaving Titus in the region of Crete so that he can go strengthen the churches, help them become biblically healthy. And then we have 1 and 2 Timothy and Philemon. What’s Paul doing there? He’s teaching Timothy. He’s teaching Philemon and others how to get the church right, strengthening the churches, producing biblically spiritually healthy churches.

Now two things to that, we’ve talked about it a lot already but planting new churches and the second would be strengthening existing churches. Right now we have 35 Anchored in Truth new church plants around the world. Thirty-five. Now we’ve had more than that because many of those have already gone past the church planting level and they’re now churches. So planting new churches is something that’s always gonna be a priority in our world missions effort.

Then, of course, strengthening existing churches. Um, one of the clearest examples of this is, ah, the brothers over at Great Commission Church in Olive Branch, Mississippi. It’s a Baptist church and they contacted us several years ago and said, “Man, we want to link with y’all.” And, and Pastor Trevor’s own words, he said, “I found me a big brother in the ministry.” And we begin to mentor them and just they did a lot of things right but they needed some help in some areas but we began to mentor them in some things, primarily in how to get involved in biblically strategic personalized missions and their missions giving went from $20,000 something dollars a year to now it’s $125,000 a year, and it’s amazing how when you strengthen these churches biblically, how effective they are and guess where Trevor’s gonna be this week? In Brazil with me helping teach those pastors. Spiritual churches, healthy churches reproduce.

And now training leaders, planting churches, strengthening existing churches, that’s what we do. Matter of fact, that’s all we do. You say, “Pastor, can we do this and can we do that?” I’m not saying we would never do this or do that, but what I am saying until we get that done thoroughly, we don’t need to be thinking about much else because that’s what the New Testament lays out is our priority. Matter of fact, you can’t think, you can’t find the Apostle Paul doing anything but that.

The third thing I want to talk about is responding to providentially open doors, and at risk of being redundant, which I am being redundant but maybe you’ll remember it that way, 1 Corinthians 16:9, “for a wide door for effective service has opened for me.” There’s this wide door of effective service, the Apostle Paul said, he’s encountered and that’s a good example of that is our work in Brazil that I’ll be preaching this next week with Kevin M. Here’s Kevin. He’s worked among these Portuguese speaking countries. He knows these pastors well. He realizes they need to be equipped better in biblical local church life. He asked us could he come up, could we come alongside him and all that’s worked so here we go to do it. So we don’t just kind of pick something out, we look for a providentially open door and try to get in on that.

Now V., and we’re done: for the glory of God among all peoples. At the end of the day, that’s got to be our motive. We’ve got to our hearts have to beat with we want God to be made much of, and I’ve defined for you before the, the glory and glorifying as a multifaceted gem, but if I could get you to remember one thing when we talk about glorifying God, here’s what we mean: we want to bring as many people as possible to the heartfelt conviction that God and God alone is worthy of honor and praise. We want our lives, our preaching, our teaching and our model as a church to so show off God’s wisdom, God’s power and God’s beauty that people are caused to deem genuinely from their hearts, “He alone is worthy of all honor and all praise!” That’s what we’re striving toward, his glory and his praise.

John Piper has this statement, it will not be new with many of you, and he says missions exists because worship doesn’t. That’s why missions exist, because there are peoples, tribes, tongues and nations where Christ is not known and he is not loved and he is not honored and he is not obeyed so he’s not worshiped. So we’ve gotta keep doing missions until he’s known and honored and loved and treasured by all peoples. Why? Because they need him. Certainly that’s a motivation, they do need him, they’re perishing forever without him, but that’s secondary to God getting glory among those peoples. As they find him and they grasp him and they treasure him and they worship him and they deem him worthy of all honor, God is so wonderful and so glorious and so holy and so unique that we need the entire globe to worship him to give him what is due to him.

So that’s the primary motivation, for the glory of God among all peoples and I’ve given you Piper’s quote, let me give you Noblit’s quote: true worship doesn’t exist until true local churches are established. God didn’t just go out and say get Bible study groups in all these countries. He didn’t say go out here and get Fellowship of Christian Athletes groups in all these schools. That’s good, I support that, that’s not what he said. He didn’t say go out here and get women’s Bible study fellowship started in all these places. I like that, well, I like some things about it, don’t like others, but anyway that’s not what he said. He said, “Go and make disciples of all the nations,” and in the understanding of that phrase, “make disciples and establish local churches,” because as we follow the chronology of the New Testament, that’s all that happened. Local churches. Local churches. Local churches to the ends of the earth.

True worship doesn’t exist until true local churches are established. Ephesians 3:21 reminds us, “to Him be glory.” How we gonna glorify him? “In the church.” Isn’t that interesting? You can’t make that word “church, ekklesia,” mean anything but one thing in the New Testament, a local church assembly. Let him be glorified in the ekklesia, the group of called-out ones, the organized local churches and in Christ Jesus. Why do you think those are put on an equal plane? Listen to me: the church is the pinnacle work of Jesus Christ. Nothing shows off the glory of Jesus like a true church. Nothing illustrates the power of Jesus like a true church. Nothing exemplifies the beauty of Christ like a true church that’s loving each other the way the Bible teaches us to love and enables us to love by his Spirit. The church is his body, it’s his bride, it’s his building.

So sometimes someone may say, “Well, wait a minute, you’re putting the church up here, what about Jesus?” The church is Jesus’. It’s his body. It’s the way he shows forth his glories. That’s why we want to be dedicated to it.

The great tragedy in the universe today is that God is not being given the glory due to his name from all peoples, tongues, tribes and nations, so here we pray with the Psalmist, Psalm 90:17, “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us; And confirm for us the work of our hands; Yes, confirm the work of our hands.” Would you ask God that? “God, would You bless Grace Life Church? Would You bless Anchored in Truth missions? Would You confirm the work of our hands, the things we’re about, to this end,” Isaiah 6:3, we’re gonna keep at it until the whole earth is full of his glory, until among every people, tongue, tribe and nation there are glory of God-focused, Christ-honoring, Bible- saturated, preaching the word in power, local church-centered local churches. Now when that gets done, I’ll retire. When that gets done, you can quick stop giving your tithes and offerings in faith commitments. When that gets done, you can stop being faithful and, and thorough and passionate about your work in your small group. But not until that gets done. Not until that gets done.

I’m gonna tell you something, are you listening to me? If you have any lesser motivation than the glory of God, you’re gonna burn out on me. You’re gonna burn out on me. Why do you think this is still resonating in my heart four decades after I started? Because the glory of God will keep you. When you begin to treasure him and want him to be made or come to be deemed worthy among all peoples and you see that his means to do that is preaching the word and planting churches and strengthening existing churches, then you’ll stay at it until you’re done. Remember when Paul got ready to die, Paul didn’t say, “I fought the good fight and I finished the fight.” He said, “I fought the good fight and I finished the course, my part of the work. I was faithful what God, God told me to do in this conquest.” And can I challenge you, Grace Life Church of the Shoals, can I challenge you Pastor Jeff Noblit, and I challenge our elders, our staff, our small groups, let’s finish our part of the course. I’m convinced I couldn’t have said this 20 years ago but I’m convinced today we’re cutting down some trees, we’re digging up some stumps, we’re plucking up some, some weeds, we’re putting in the furrows, we’re getting the right herbicides on there and the right fertilizers and we’re putting out some seeds and we’re just gonna see a little of the crop, and I believe after most of us are dead, there’s gonna be great great things that he’s let us get in on starting.

I went dove hunting yesterday. I was 0 for 4. Shot four times and they laughed and flew off and there was the most beautiful soybean field out there. It was just rich and green. It was beautiful and as I was thinking about my sermon, I thought, I didn’t one time think about the first guy that went out there, who knows, 100 years ago, and cut the trees down, got his mules and dug up and worked up the stumps, threw out the rocks. All I saw was the beautiful soybeans. Well, I think we’re somewhere in the tree cutting, root digging up, soil preparation, seed planting in all of our Anchored in Truth enterprises, but one day there’s gonna be a lush green harvest for the glory of God but we need to finish our course. Finish our course.