THE BIBLICAL BASIS FOR MISSIONS 08-02-17 Romans 10:12-15 (14-15a)

Why are there missionaries? Many in our culture say that we don't need them, that they do more harm than good. "If there is a God", they say, "there are many roads to Him. How can you Christians be so narrow-minded to believe that your road is the only road? To send missionaries to other cultures in an attempt to convince people that your way is the only way is the height of arrogance and intolerance" they say. "Let the Buddhists worship as Buddhists; and the Hindus worship as Hindus; let the Muslims worship as Muslims; and the Jews worship as Jews; let the Animists worship as Animists, the Taoists worship as Taoists, and the pagans worship as pagans. Your way is no better than their way."

And the sad fact is that many who call themselves Christians today believe what these critics of Christianity have to say about us and our efforts to bring others to faith in Jesus. They believe that Jesus is only one among many ways to God. So why do we send missionaries?

God has given me a heart for missions. That's why we have had our Annual Missions Conference this week, and why we have missionaries with us every month. As a Pastor, I want to enable as many people as possible to fulfill the call of God on their lives. I want to do all I can to stir this congregation to pray, and to give, and perhaps even to respond to the call to go. I believe with all my heart that we still need to carry the good news of Jesus to places where people don't have the opportunities to hear like we do in America. But does our world really need these people?

This morning I want to try to help you to see THE BIBLICAL BASIS FOR MISSIONS. I want us to look at some verses in the Bible that will help us to see why missionaries are still necessary, and why we as a church will do all we can to support the effort of world missions.Biblically, here is why we send and support missionaries:

1. Because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. That's what the Bible says in Romans 3:23. There is none righteous, no not one it says in v.10 of that same chapter. Good people, sincere people, moral people, immoral people, unreached people: we are all sinners. Billy Graham is a sinner; Osama Bin Laden is a sinner. I'm a sinner; you're a sinner, and so are all those who have never heard the message of salvation.

Adam sinned, and his choice, brought some awful consequences to our world. But we can't just blame our sinful condition on him. Everyone in the world, when presented with the choice, ratifies Adam's decision. We too choose to sin. Sin is the universal disease. It plagues us in the streets of our greatest cities, and it plagues people in the jungles of the Amazon. In every village, in every hamlet, in every town, in every city, in every country on every continent of the world, ALL HAVE SINNED.That's the first reason we send and support missionaries. The second is

2. Because the wages of sin is death, Romans 6:23 says. Wages are something you earn. Wages are something you deserve. They are rightfully yours. Because of our sin, we deserve to die.There are three kinds of death spoken of in the Bible, and all involve separation. One kind of death is physical death, where the soul and the spirit are separated from the body. The body is laid in the ground, but the spiritual part of the person goes on into eternity.

Another kind of death spoken of in the Bible is spiritual death. That's where someone is separated from God. The Bible speaks of those who are dead while they yet live, and spiritual death is what is being spoken of here.The third kind of death is when the first two combine. When a person who is spiritually dead dies physically, the Bible says that they are eternally dead, eternally separated from God.The wages of sin is death: death in which of these three senses?

Sin separates us from God, so spiritual death is the wage of sin.?But sin introduced physical death into our world, so that, too, is a wage of sin. And now the two can be combined, resulting in eternal death. All three kinds of death are the wages of sin.

Why will some spend their eternity separated from God? How can God be just in sending people who have never heard to a place of eternal separation, eternal suffering? It's because all have sinned, and hell is the result of our sin. It's not that everyone is basically good, and somehow God gets mixed up and sends some good people to hell. Hell is what we all deserve. It's what I deserve, and what you deserve. We don't go to heaven because we deserve it. If we got what we deserved, it would be eternal separation and suffering. But that brings us to our third reason for missions and missionaries.

3. God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. That's what the Bible says in 2 Peter 3:9. John 3:16 says "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Everlasting life rather than everlasting death.

God's will is that no one be eternally separated from Him. God's will is that no one perish. God's will is that all would come to repentance and spend eternity with Him in heaven. But God's will is not always done on earth as it is in heaven. His will being done on earth very often depends on our obedience.

How can a good God, a loving God, send people to an eternal hell? He doesn't. As a matter of fact, He doesn't even want them to go there. But He does allow us to make choices and experience the consequences of those choices. People will go to hell, but not because God wants them to. He wants them to find salvation through His Son, Jesus. Which brings us to #4.

4. We send and support missionaries because there is salvation in no one else but Jesus. God declares in Acts 4:12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY. JESUS IS THE ONLY WAY OF SALVATION, AND PEOPLE ARE ETERNALLY LOST WITHOUT HIM.

This is not a point of doctrine we can compromise and still call ourselves Christians. In John 14:6, Jesus Himself said "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If Jesus lied here, or was mistaken, then He is not a man of truth and cannot be our Savior. Christianity is not one among many ways to heaven. Jesus is not one among many religious teachers, the Christians' teacher, even as the Jews have Moses, and the Muslims have Mohammed, and the Buddhists have Buddha. Christianity is the only way, and Jesus is the only door. I know it's narrow, I know it's intolerant, but that's the teaching of the Bible.

Disagree with it if you will; argue with it if you like; but understand that the Bible teaches that without Jesus a person is eternally lost. There is no other way. And that's the reason we send and support missionaries, so lost people can hear about Jesus.

The Arabs are not better off if we just leave them alone in their Muslim religion. The Japanese are not better off if we just leave them alone in their Buddhist and Shinto religion. Those in India will not be better off if we keep our Christianity to ourselves and leave them in their Hinduism. In Latin America, in Africa, in the Islands of the Pacific, in the Far East and in Asia and in Europe, and even in America, people are not better off without Jesus. They are lost without Jesus.

Don't be dissuaded by the voice of those who tell us that we should just keep our Christianity to ourselves. Don't listen to those who would tell us that people around the world would be better off if we would just leave them alone. Islam isn't leaving them alone. The New Agers aren't leaving them alone. Satan isn't leaving them alone. Why should we who have the truth leave them alone? We send and support missionaries because Jesus is the only way to God, and the only way to heaven.

5. A fifth reason we send and support missionaries is because of what it says in our text this morning (read Romans 10:12-15). How can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? For missionaries to go, they need us to send them.

It is because of God's mercy that any of us will make it to heaven. The big difficulty is that God has left the message of His mercy in the hands of human beings like you and me. And some who will miss heaven will not do so because they have rebelled against the message; they will miss heaven because they never heard the message.

If I were God, I would have done it differently. But for some reason, God has left the message in our hands and said "Go and preach the Gospel to every creature." He has given to you and to me an awesome responsibility.

Very few, if any, in America will miss heaven because they didn't have the opportunity to hear. We have Bible preaching churches by the 10s of thousands. We have Gospel radio and television broadcasts 24 hours a day. Americans can hear if they will hear.

But it's not that way around the world. There are millions yet in our world who have never once had the opportunity to hear the good news that Jesus will forgive them of their sins and give them peace with God. And they will never hear unless someone is sent to them with this good news.

When Jesus fed the 5000, He had them sit down in companies of 50 according to the Gospel of Luke. 5000 people in groups of 50. If my math is correct, that makes 100 groups. And some groups were closer to Jesus, and others were further away.

Do you suppose that when Jesus gave the bread and fish to His disciple to serve the people, they served those in the closest groups, and came back to Jesus for more fish and bread, and then served the closest groups again? Do you suppose they repeated feeding the closest groups over and over and over again until they had bread and fish coming out their ears? I hardly think that was the case at all. It wouldn?t be just for those in front to get seconds and thirds until all had been served at least once.

I wonder if God isn't wanting to say to us again today "What about those in the back rows? When are they going to get something to eat? When are you going to get around to serving them?"

God has provided us in the Assemblies of God with a seemingly never-ending line of candidates waiting to go to the mission field. For about 4 years I sat on our District Foreign Missions committee and helped interview missionary candidates. These weren't people who couldn't make it somewhere else in the ministry, so now they were going to the mission field. These were many of our very finest young men and women.

Chris and Mike Ness, both raised in Africa by missionary parents are now themselves missionaries in Africa. Dave and Rick Ellis, raised by missionary parents in Argentina, and now both of them missionaries in South America. Randy Martin and Greg Roane are also second generation missionaries. Last year we heard from Rick Johnson from the Caribbean, and the Alan Johnsons from Thailand, the Wendlers from China, the Hursts from Africa, the Taylors from Angola, the Helins from Europe, the Halvorsons from Romania, the Glen Johnsons from Europe, the Thomases from Mexico, the Meyers from Africa -great, great people with a deep burden for the lost.

These are people whom we are having a part in sending to the back rows, people who are going to places that you and I likely will never see, and they are sharing the good news of Jesus in these places. And they are diligently training others in that other culture to do the same.

Each local church is to be supported by the tithes of its people. That's the way I believe God has ordained it. When you send your tithes to the TV preacher or the radio preacher, it weakens the local church, and what it can do in the local community.

But we need to give offerings above our tithes. That's where the TV preacher comes in, and that's where missions comes in. History and statistics show, and I am absolutely convinced that God will bless a missionary minded church. He won't let us suffer if we give generously to missions.

But the reason missionaries come is not just to get an offering. They come to remind us of the need, and to call us to pray. They are the front line troops in the battle to rescue men and women and young people and children from the kingdom of Satan. Their battle is spiritual and they desperately need people like you and me, who will covenant with them to pray earnestly for them as their do their work.They get lonely; they get tempted; they get sick; they have family problems; they get discouraged; they get frustrated; they sometimes even get disillusioned. And at times they cry out "Lord, please have someone pray for me."

When you wake up in the middle of the night, don't toss and turn trying to go back to sleep. Begin to ask the Lord, "who is it that needs my prayers right now?" If it's the devil who's been waking you up, he'll let you go back to sleep. He certainly doesn't want you to be awake praying. He wants you awake fretting and worrying. And if it's God Who has awakened you, it's probably for the purpose of prayer.

Let me bring this to a close. Missionaries are still needed, and as your pastor, I want to lead you in doing as much for missions as we possibly can: to pray, to give, to go.

In your bulletin is a faith promise sheet. Take it out. If you are already giving to missions on a regular basis and plan to continue to do so, we need to know that. If you are not yet giving regularly to missions and plan to do so, we would like to know that too. Let's read through this sheet together: (read)

Missionaries today are telling me that in church after church, people have a difficult time making commitments. They want to give when they feel like giving; they don't want to be committed to giving. We need you to be committed to giving. Missionaries need to have commitments from churches before they can go, and they are having a hard time getting those commitments. It's not that the money isn't there; it's that the commitment isn't there.

What does God want you to do on a regular basis for missions this coming year? No one will ever come calling to collect your faith promise. If God doesn't provide, you are released from the commitment. But when He does provide, make sure you give it to missions, and not spend it on yourself.

PRAY