Our Father in Heaven, we thank you for this opportunity to worship you as united congregation. We thank you for the way in which it is a foretaste as imperfect as we are, Lord, of that worship that is a part of our hope in glory when people from every nation and language will be standing before the throne in front of the Lamb, hailing you and praising you for the salvation that belongs to our God who sits upon the throne into the Lamb. We do ask, Lord, that as we meditate on your Word, that again, you would write it upon our hearts, speak to each one of us, help us to see the place which we should play that role that you have appointed for us of good works that might allow the good news of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to be heard at the very ends of the earth. We ask in His name, amen. Oh, this is very exciting, isn't it? Somebody mentioned Navy next year, we ought to look at the Wang Center, although this has almost that feeling, it's a great privilege to join together with brothers and sisters from Park Street Church. Just out of interest, do we have any first-time visitors in our fellowship? I'm just interested if anyone actually made it over, raise your hand up high and encourage these people who came. My colleagues in the ministry was teasing me in pointing out that this is the very first Sunday in 190 years when there has not been a formal worship service at Park Street Church and just think it happened on my watch. So you've marked the demise of Park Street Church. Well, actually, there's a reason for being here. In part, of course, it's so that we might symbolize the fact that if there is anything that more unifies our body of Christ, in addition to our common passion for Jesus Christ, it is the mission of our church to be used for the global outreach of the gospel. And so it's appropriate, especially on this Sunday, that we would be together. I think there's a further helpful symbolism by our meeting in this place, and it is the reminder that the church is not the building. We know this. It's the body of Christ, it's those whose lives have been knit together, baptized by the Holy Spirit into one body. And it's also a helpful reminder being here at Cremont Temple that we're not alone. We're not even alone in terms of the responsibilities for outreach in Boston. There are many scores of excellent Bible preaching churches who are laboring shoulder to shoulder with us, though we often in our parochialism tend to minimize that or forget it. There is one wonderful body of Christ where believers can be nourished in their faith and have excellent Bible teaching and encouragement in their walk with the Lord. In our literature about the mission's conference, it has been reiterated that our goal in missions, and maybe it should perhaps instead be said, it's our priority or our method or something like that, but our goal in missions at Parochery Church is partnership. The body of Christ working together to bring the gospel to all nations. This outreach may take place in Boston or on the other side of the globe, but we are all called to have a part in it. So then the question for us this afternoon is, what's the part that God has for you and for me in that global outreach of the gospel? I do want to put you all at ease. There is a second aspect to the service that's unique this afternoon in terms of our experience. It's not just that we're meeting in a different locale, but perhaps more than any other worship service, we take this opportunity traditionally at the climax of our mission's conference to challenge each other to respond to the opportunity to get involved. In this case, this involves at least as a first step, responding in terms of this pledge form. And I'd like to encourage you, if you will, just look in your bullet pen, see if you can find it. Make sure you've got one. If anyone doesn't have it, raise your hand so the ushers can get you a copy of the pledge form. And if you don't have a pencil or a writing implement, raise your hand, we got lots of pencils, and you can take one home as a little token, a souvenir of the service. But get that out in the roller coaster of this past week and the troubles in Palm Beach County. I don't want anyone to be confused by the design of our ballot. My greatest fear is that you might pledge $10, and then leave the sanctuary and realize that you'd really meant to pledge $1,000, and are now regretting that you can't change your ballot. Well, the good news is, if we work through this carefully, you'll be able to put the pledge there that God has really laying on your heart. Let me first invite you just right now. We're not going to go through it all. Don't take off the boxes quite yet, but do please join me in carrying off the bottom third of your pledge form just to get ready. So we'll be able to fill this out in a relaxed manner. A tear off the bottom third, if you would, and then write your name and your address. I really would like everyone to do that. Please do that. If you're a visitor, you can then write visitor if you want. But write your name and address just to get that down on paper. Even if you feel that you can't decide to commit in a way of a financial pledge or some other kind of pledge and response to our mission's conference, if you just fill out your name and address, and then hand this in with the offering, that will assure you that you will then be on our mailing list, and then we will send to you giving envelopes, if you would like to have giving envelopes, to allow you to give in a more confidential manner in the coming year. In those envelopes, allow you to designate not just for missions, but also for the general budget of the church. So it'll be useful if everyone fills out their name and address, even if you are not yet at a point where you're ready to make a pledge. I'm praying, though, that most of you will be at that point. I'm asking, and we've already, a number of you have already handed these ins, and by the way, if you've already pledged something and you feel God is laying on your heart to amend your vote, you can do that here. You can pledge more this Sunday afternoon. In any case, fill out your name and address, and then looking to the left hand side of the pledge form, you'll notice the first box that you are invited to consider is God is leading me toward full-time missionary service. Please contact me about career missionary or tent-making opportunities, and you can check off that box. It may be that the Lord has spoken to a number here in the sanctuary this week, or perhaps in weeks and months earlier, about the possibility of you taking on this responsibility, be a career missionary, to be fully supported by Park Street Church sent out into some part of the world that right now is disadvantaged and cannot hear the gospel. There are now, by most estimates, something like 10,000 separate, unreached groups, people groups in the world, 10,000 groups, where 2.5 billion people live beyond the possibility that they might hear the gospel, unless somebody crosses a language barrier, a cultural barrier, a national barrier, and goes from one place to another place where they're not at all feeling comfortable, unless someone does that with the gospel, these people, humanly speaking, will not have the opportunity to respond to the claims of Christ. And so naturally, we're praying to be people here in our church that would be sent out. There are other missionaries, some of you have heard their stories that have had to come home for one reason or another. I think of the McClendons who were engaged in Bible translation. Wickliffe Bible translators tells us there are still 3,000 languages that do not yet have any portion of the Bible translated into that language. 3,000 languages where people cannot hear the word of God, at least in their native language. Now many of them might be so privileged as to be able to speak a trade language like English, but most of them aren't in that position. And the McClendons have come back now from Niger because of the health needs of their daughter, Suzanne. I believe the fact that they have returned is not a defeat. That's a victory. It demonstrates the priority that we place as Christians on the welfare of our families. It's a lesson written in their lives that they should act in that way. Nevertheless, if you did viewing it from a more spiritual perspective, it seems to me that we don't want to give the enemy any reason to gloat. But every missionary who comes home is then used by God to raise up two more missionaries to go back, I think Satan will get the point. He'll let up on at least those kinds of attacks. So I'm praying there will be some who will feel that need and burden to go back and pick up the work after the McClendons have left off in Bible translation. There are others as well who are planning for retirement. You know, the winengers who will be coming home from Zambia, not to distant future. There may be some doctor, physician, and training who would be called of God. Maybe two to go back to that nation. So please fill that out of the Lord has been speaking to you about the need and possibility use your life in that way. Some of you will be going out as tent-making ministries as it's called as the example of the Williams Lucinda shared with us a moment ago. These are those people who are recognizing that their professional skills and training would fit them to work in some other country where the gospel is not well represented, where you might be able to receive full support from your work. Perhaps you're an engineer, a software engineer, an architect, a carpenter. You have some other marketable skill that could be used in one of these other nations, perhaps in the 1040 window between the 10th parallel and the 40th parallel across North Africa, the Middle East, and into Asia where the church is not well represented. You check off that box if you are considering taking your profession into that part of the world. In some cases you're going to need support too. If you go to Central Asia there are some countries where you can function as a doctor or an English teacher, but the average salary for all the nationals and for you as an international would only be between $19 or $20 a month. You can't live on $20 a month, most of us. Of course, we would count it a privilege at Park Street Church to get behind you, pray for you, and provide for that differential in your salary to allow you to go to where the opportunities are now inviting God's people to come and be used. On the lower left hand side, maybe that your heart is really more for Boston, we're not in the 1040 window, we're at the 42nd parallel, but it might as well be the 1040 window, sometimes where we're made to feel in post-Christian New England particularly, where the gospel is not very often well represented. God may be calling you to a ministry here. We have 18 local ministries with which we partner and they're listed in the pledge form. If you want to get involved and give your energy, your time, and one of those ministries, you check that box. And then, of course, moving to the right hand side of the pledge form. There are those in this congregation who will not be led to leave this country or to go into some of cross-cultural experience, God is calling you to stay behind. But the sacrifice that he is asking of us is no less great, no less demanding than the sacrifice of those who follow Christ by going somewhere. The sending church needs to be just as radical in its faith as those who go. I'm often reminded of John Wesley, who advised the co-workers in Wales, make all the money you can, save all you can, and give away all you can. Make all you can, ask God to bless the works of your hands and your mind, use your skills to get jobs where you'll be productive and fruitful, and ask him also to bless you even in material terms so that you might support many more of our missionaries than would otherwise have been possible and be used for the extension of the kingdom. The use in works here in home that also require financial resourcing. Parks and Church has entered into a partnership with campus Crusade for Christ, an Intervarcity Christian Fellowship. This last year, we raised the amount of our giving to that to $100,000. That needs to be paid. It'd be great if we could give more. We're reminded of the opportunity of an orphanage for the street children in La Paz that Chi Huang is just shared with us. I know they could use well over $100,000 if we had it to give. Allow God to lay on your heart a burden that we might be able to be used in these good works for the extension of his kingdom. What is the purpose of our lives? I'm often reminded of Sir Leonard Wolfe's disarmingly-candid autobiography. After 50 years as a very successful and respected statesman and publisher, a distinguished career, he writes this. Looking back at the age of 88, over 57 years of my political work in England, knowing what I aimed for in the results, meditating on the history of Britain in the world since 1914, I see clearly that I achieved practically nothing. The world today and the history of the human aunt hill during the last 57 years would be exactly the same if I had played ping pong instead of sitting on committees and writing books in Memoranda. I have, therefore, to make the rather ignominious confession to myself and to anyone who may read this book, that I must have in this long life ground through between 150,000 and 200,000 hours of perfectly useless work, the inspired author of the Book of Ecclesiastes writes with the same disarmy, candor, he says, when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toil to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind, nothing was gained under the sun. What is the purpose of our lives? Of course there are plenty who would pat themselves on the back in the self-flattering gesture and find lots of reason to rejoice over this or that accomplishment or achievement or success in their lives. But what is it that allows these individuals, this honesty, to assess their lives and why is it not enough, adjust to have those achievements? You see, the lesson of Ecclesiastes is that even when you've achieved success, significance can still be as elusive as ever. You're made for more than success. God has put eternity in our hearts. We want our lives to count. And they can count, not just here in the States or even in the foreign mission field if you happen to be called to be an evangelist, it's not a call for everyone to become a missionary in the traditional sense or in a church, planter, or Christian leader, a pastor, that's not what the Bible is talking about. What it is talking about, however, is laying down our lives as living sacrifices for the one who laid down his life for us. It's allowing our labor in the Lord not to be in vain because we're doing it for him and for his purposes. It's making sure that that which we are living for is also worth dying for. Because if it's not worth dying for, it's not worth living for. It's whatever we do with our efforts working as for the Lord and not for men as Paul writes in Colossians. This mission's conference has its theme, work and witness, using our work to extend the witness of Christ's church, the gospel witness, even to the ends of the earth. It's praying that God might strategically place you at fidelity in Boston or perhaps it will be in some translation center in Central Asia or some missionary outpost in Zambia asking that God might place you where he can maximally use your gifts for the transformation of lives winning others to Christ. The text that was read has often been called the Great Commission of the Old Testament. The Lord said to Abram, leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. That's been the pattern from the start. God's radical command, his radical demand on the life of Abram, the father of our faith. There he was at 75, perfectly happy where he was. He's speaking there wasn't a reason to get up out of his chair and move or to leave his home and start inhabiting a tent. There was nothing about Canaan that he found particularly attractive. In fact, he didn't even know he was going to go to Canaan. That Bible tells us that it was by faith and obedience that he went, even though he did not know where he was going, but by faith, he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country and he lived in tents as did Isaac and Jacob who were heirs with him of the same promise. It's trusting in God. It all begins with God. It's God speaking to Abraham. The Lord said to Abram, it's God's word because God is the Lord of our lives. He's the one who's in charge and it's his purpose, it's his mission into which we are being fit. He's the one who sends and he continues to do so. Jesus, when he saw the crowds, had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd and then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Jesus invites us, really this is the only prayer, of course, he has the model prayer, the Lord's prayer, but the only occasion where he tells his disciples something specific to pray about, and what is it? It's that the Lord of the harvest would send out more workers into the harvest field wherever that field is, maybe at your college campus or maybe in your business, the boardroom or down in the galleys of a publishing house where we could be anywhere, wherever you are, in your neighborhood. Kasey often reminds us that every heart with Christ is a missionary. Every heart without Christ is a mission field. That's the job. How could Abraham do it? Our text wonderfully puts it together in just the two or three verses that were read. Verse two and verse three, there are actually seven clauses. The first three of them are promises to bless Abraham, summarize with, and I will bless you. What God's going to do for you, for Abraham? God's going to bless you, he promises. And the last three clauses, the first three is, I'm going to bless you, the last three is, you're going to be a blessing. Our impact, how God is going to use you to affect the nations. God is going to bless you to make you a blessing. That's the pattern in Genesis chapter 12. What does it mean to be blessed? Well, of course you could just read the following chapters, God bless Abraham in every imaginable way, material and also intangibly. God gave him wealth, he gave him property and progeny, he gave him everything. All the things that were the part of his life that were visible tokens of God's love. He gave him success and protection, he gave him that shirt, he gave him position, he said, I will make your name great, he gave him honor, some there, there's some in this congregation who have been honored by God. The Scripture says, those who honor me, I will honor, God may have honored you by giving you many privileges that don't come to others, positions of responsibility, maybe like the Esther in the book of Esther, it could be said of you that God has brought you to the kingdom for such a time as this, giving you promotion, exactly to be used in that new strategic position for the benefit of his kingdom. But the whole point of it, what's all the point of the blessing, it's not simply to revel in the abundance, it's not just simply to indulge ourselves and luxuriate in all of God's goodness. It's to be used. The three first clauses, the first three are, you're going to be blessed, the last one, the last three or how God's going to use you in the world, the middle one which I've skipped, the middle one is the pivot, it's the heart, it's what I call a blessing sandwich. You know what a sandwich, when you get excited about a sandwich, let's just say we're giving out free lobster sandwiches here at Tremont Temple. Lobster sandwiches, you love a lobster sandwich, maybe not all of you do, I happen to, when you report it, you don't say, oh, let me tell you, I'm going to tell you in sequence, first there was this delicious fresh bread, then a layer of exquisite mayonnaise, then there were these chunks of lobster meat, and then there was lettuce, and finally there was another piece of bread, you know, you don't climax at the end of the progression, the climax, the punchline is in the heart, this is a common literary form in the Old Testament where the punchline is not where we're expecting it as Western readers, but it's in the heart it isn't the first three promises, it's not the last three promises, it's the heart, it's the pivot, it's the middle one, and what is the middle one, you will be a blessing, or as a lot of Bibles translate, and I think actually better, so that you will be a blessing, or so be a blessing, it's actually an imperative, it's a command, so be a blessing, say it so that I know you got it, so be a blessing, I'm going to bless you, so be a blessing, it's a command, that's the job, that's what we're supposed to do, that's what this mission's conference is about, we're praying that God will lay on your hearts, how you can be a blessing, how God can use you personally with a sacrifice of your life, or how God will use all of us with a sacrifice of our substance, and with our prayers, let's pray that God does it, let's turn to Him, our Father in heaven, we put ourselves at your disposal because we belong to you, we acknowledge that Jesus Christ died for each of us, and so we are His body and soul to be used as you see fit, we thank you Lord, that even as you commanded Abram to go and be a blessing, you've commanded us to go and be a blessing, to go, not to go just to those with whom we're most comfortable, of course there is much benefit Lord, in the fellowship of the saints as we strengthen and encourage one another in our walk with you, but thank you Lord, that you've called us to go outside, to go outside the comfort zone of the walls of part street church, even in this worship service, and then to go outside and beyond this into the streets of Boston, and go beyond that into all of New England and even to the four corners of the earth, into the most remote regions of those who've never heard, help us Lord to respond to your command, and those of us who are privileged to remain behind, we pray that you would so bless the works of our hands and our minds, that we might be a much more adequate, more sacrificial space of support for those who go out, may we be able to give with glad and generous hearts for this work of the global outreach of the gospel we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.