Glad to see all of you for Sunday school. Thanks for coming into the sanctuary and timely fashion. Last night we were waiting on the Lord. Not on Richard Pratt. We were waiting on the Lord and God brought him in safely and we were not disappointed. It was a thrill to hear him speak. We have the opportunity to hear him speak this morning as well and I'm sure you'll want to introduce yourself to him and welcome him to Gainesville. I don't want to take away from his time this morning so we're going to open with prayer and then I'll turn it over with Dr. Pratt which you bow with me. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you really are king in head of the church and you're king over all the earth. And we pray that in this mission's emphasis thrust this weekend that you would help us to see you, Jesus, in all of your glory. We thank you that one day the nations will resort to the root of Jesse that they will worship at your feet, that you will be crowned king of kings and Lord of lords for all eternity. So in anticipation of that day would you give us a glimpse of what heaven is going to be like and in faith will you cause us to claim the gospel as our own and to publish it and to publicize it throughout the world. Pray that you would be with us, be with Dr. Pratt as he speaks, be with us as we hear that the seed would fall upon good ground and pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Hi everybody. I'll stand up, don't worry. Hey, who was here last night? Wow. I didn't know there were that many here last night. I was asleep. I know you were. Yeah, we went till those who weren't here last night, we went till 1230. So they're the real faithful ones, so the rest of you should have been here, no, just joking. Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here. If this is, if you knew this was mission Sunday and you came anyway, you're really brave. I know that, okay, so thank you for coming. I always, I love to do missions weekends at churches and I do a lot of that and the reason I love it is because I love missions so much. But I also know that there's a tendency, sort of a deception that takes place and that is that when you have a mission's emphasis Sunday, you can sometimes get the false impression. That missions is just one thing we do. Now, on the way up here last night, some of the people of the church here have heard a sermon that I did at a DMTW meeting down in Atlanta a couple of years ago. And I was asked specifically, told specifically, the guy with a camera, yeah, to do that, okay. So I'm sorry, I just, I do what I'm told to do, I say don't, don't give me any choices, I'll do exactly what you want me to do, it's no problem, give me choices, I have to think about it. So I'm going to talk about one of those things but I'm not going to do it like I did there, okay. The, this idea that missions can sometimes just sort of be like one piece of what a church does or one piece of what a Christian is involved in is so difficult to overcome that we just really have to get right to the point and say that's not true. The mission of the church which is basically to take the good news of Jesus everywhere in the world, okay, let's just put it that way, we can just say that's our mission. It's not one piece of what we do, it's not set alongside of worship and education and whatever else you may do, fellowship, I don't know, you know, we normally have a church which say, well, we worship and then we fellowship with each other and we educate people and then we, number four, have missions. Now you can tell that on a practical level that is what we do sometimes and the best way you can tell that is by asking the question, when you have a financial crunch in a church what goes first, okay, now is it, no, I don't know whether you've had a serious financial crunch here or not, I hope you haven't, if you have, well, I don't know about it, okay, so let me just say that normally in a normal church the first thing that goes from a budget of a church is the missions. You trim back, you call up some missionaries and say we're going to have to cut everybody back 10% or 5% or whatever you may do and what that allows you to see of course is just like in your own family budget where you put your priorities, I mean the thing you do in your family budget when you come to a crunch is you cut out the things that you think you can do without and you trim back and keep the essential things in order, right? You take care of paying the rent or paying the mortgage, that's number one in most people's lives and then you start cutting back things like, well, we're not going to go to as many movies as we used to and why is that? Well, because we can watch movies on TV, that's why and that's free. We're paying 100 bucks a month for cable anyway, we may as well use it and so you cut out going to movies, you cut out going out to eat because you can eat cheaper at home and things like that and in some ways that's the way it is with missions in a church that if everything else is in order, if everything else is lined up, if we're taking care of the building fund, if we're taking care of the pastor's salaries, if we're taking care of the program, keeping the lights running and the air conditioner, we certainly can't have church without the air conditioner running, that's for sure. Well, then if all those things are lined up right, then we will tack on mission program but as soon as the crunch comes and you have to start trimming back, you don't think in terms of, well, let's turn the air conditioner up five degrees. Do you think we could survive this morning without the air conditioner? Probably, back to the ladies here and the men here, all many of you are wearing coats because you're cold, which I should know. So that's just the way it is, but it is not the way it's supposed to be. This task, this project of spreading the good news of Jesus is not something that's weighed down on the list of priorities that you get to if everything else is in order. It is essential to who we are. It's as essential as having a worship service. It's as essential as paying the pastor. It's as essential as anything else you do. How's that? Now, I know we don't think that way, so let's ask the question, why would somebody come from out of town and say that to us? I had a great opportunity. I think I was about 12 years old. I've got to find out when I did this so I can don't keep on changing my age. I think I was 12 when this happened. I spent a summer with my father adding a room to our house. I learned a lot about carpentry, about building, and things like that. It was a great summer for me. I'm not an expert builder, but I can handle a saw and a drill and those kinds of things because of that time. My mother was not involved in this. We were involved day and night for three months, but my mother was not involved. The only involvement she had was every morning she'd come out and she'd say, all I care is that it doesn't look like it was added to the house. I wanted to look like it was a part of the original plan. Every night when she'd come back, we try to tell her all the things that we had done that day, you know, to make her proud or whatever, and all she would say is, I don't care, all I care is that it doesn't look like it was added to the house. That was her only concern. So we worked very hard to make sure the brick lined up, the windows matched, the floors were perfect, that there was a sense of continuity as you walk from one room to the other and there were no ramps or anything like that, most added on houses. Everything was just perfect, okay, and as far as we were concerned, we had accomplished it. But I guarantee you, if you went to 408 Bonheal Drive Northwest, Rona, Virginia today, and you drove by my parents home, it wouldn't take you two seconds before you realized that room was added to the house. No matter how hard you try, no matter how much you try to make it look like it was a part of the original floor plan, if it's an add-on, it looks like an add-on. Well, that's the way we deal with this thing called the mission. In our personal lives, we think, I've got certain things that I do, my job, my parenting, my marriage, and now I've went to the missions conference, so I guess I need to tack on this thing called the mission. So you put some missionaries pictures on the refrigerator, and every once in a while you might offer a prayer for one. Or in your family, when you're telling your children what's important in life, you're going to tell them things like, what's important in life is obeying me, going to school, working hard, making good grades, graduating, going to a good college, getting a good job, and if you ever think about it at all, you might tack on something about, you know, let's think about the missionary that's over there in Kenya. Remember that missionary? If you think about it for your church, same kind of thing. Well, what I'm going to try to show you today from the Bible is that that's not the way Jesus wants us to think about this thing called the mission of getting the word out. Instead, getting the word out was the original floor plan of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, not an add-on, and more basic even than that. It's the original floor plan for what it means to be a human, a human being. That's how basic it is. It's why you breathe. It's why our race exists on this planet. Now, to get the original floor plan, we have to go back to the original design, which is just found in Genesis 1. So, take a look at Genesis 1, and we'll just see how this is true. I'm going to need somebody, let me know the time, because I don't have any. Can you give me like a 10-minute warning? How much time we have left now? 30 minutes. Okay, we can do it. Genesis 1, let's begin around, verse 26. This is where the Bible tells us, the first time it ever speaks of us, verse 26, all right? There's 25. There's 26. Then God said, let us make man in our image. In our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, He created him, male and female, He created them. God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful, and increase in number, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, and over every living creature that moves on the ground. That's a great passage. It's one that if you've ever gone to Sunday school, you've probably heard before. It's the first time God talks about us as far as we know. He's up in heaven, in the heavenly counsel talking about, let's do this next, let's do this next, and what He says in verse 26 is, let's make humanity. I stood up in front of a church one time, it wasn't a PCA church, you'll know that in a minute. I stood up in front of this church, and I said, I'm going to say two words, and I want you to shout back at me, you see, not PCA. I want you to shout back at me, the first thing that comes to mind. So I stood there and I said, about 500 people or so, and I said, human beings. And without a moment's hesitation, an absolute unison, the whole crowd shouted, back at me, sinners. And I said, thank you very much. Thanks for falling into that trap. I thought that's what you'd say, knowing you a little bit. I thought that's what you'd say, sinners, and isn't it funny that the first thing that tends to come to our minds when we think of people is sinners? And if you have any doubt that you're a sinner or that I'm a sinner, just let me make it clear, you are, I am. You don't have to be an action murderer to be a sinner. All you have to be is just a little imperfect, okay? And I hope nobody in this room would think themselves to be absolutely perfect. So we're all sinners. So no denial of that, and that's important, but why, what's the big deal about being a sinner? What's the big deal is that it's something that's being a sinner. And what is that thing? It's called in this passage the image and the likeness of God. Let us make man in our image. I hate to tell you this, but your dog is not going to be in the new world with you. Sorry. Your cat didn't make it to happen. Mine did. They were happy when he came. They thought they were privileged to have him there, but yours is not going to make it. You are going to have dogs and cats in the new world, that's true, but your dog is not going to have eternal life and your dog is not going to spend eternity under the judgment of God. Do you know why? He's a dog. Now that's not true for dogs, but it is true for us. People, human beings are going to either experience eternal life in Christ in the new heavens and the new earth, or they're going to spend eternal judgment under the wrath of God. And why is that? Because they're not dogs and cats. They're the image and the likeness of God. And so your sinfulness becomes significant because you are a sinful image of God. That is essential to understand about you, but unfortunately we don't understand what it means to be the image of God. We have all kinds of wacky ideas, all kinds of paper thin ideas of what that might mean. So we need to back up and think about what in the world God meant when he said, let us make man in our image. It's funny, the first thing that God said about us was not, let's make some sinners, or let's make a creature that will become a sinner. No, that's not what he said. What he said was, let's make our image, let's make the image and the likeness of God. And that is bottom line what and who you are. But to understand what that is, you have to get in a time machine and you have to go back in time, way back in time, to the times of pyramids and ziggarrots and times of Yulebrenner and Charlton Heston, those guys, you have to get way back and you have to think the way they thought. Because it might surprise you to know that Moses is not the first person ever to use the expression image of God, likeness of God, son of God. It was a phrase that was used in many cultures in the world of Moses. They used it in Egypt, they used it in Babylon, they used it in Assyria, they used it in Canaan. They talked about the image, the likeness, the son of, they were all synonyms, the gods. Now in those ancient worlds, the son or the image of God was only one person in society. Can you imagine who that was? Yeah, the Pharaoh, Yulebrenner, okay, the emperor, the king. That was the only person that got that title, everybody else was something much less than that. That's how they justified turning people into slaves. That's how they justified mistreating people, they're not the image of God, they're not the likeness of God. Now in the ancient world of the Bible, and Moses was raised up in that world, so remember, he knew all this stuff. He knew that the Egyptians had been propagandizing the Israelites, they had propagandized him as a child growing up in the course of Egypt to believe that only the Pharaoh was the image of God. Now the reason they thought that the Pharaoh was the image of God was this, they believed that Pharaohs or kings had a special role in human society, and it was this. They were to learn what the gods up in heaven wanted, and then they were to use their political power to make it happen on the earth. They would get dreams and visions of what cities should look like, and then they would tell people make the city look like this. They would get have dreams and visions of what nations they were to attack, and then they would make it happen. You learn the will of the gods in heaven and you make it happen on the earth. That was what the image of God, the representative of God, the image of God was supposed to do on this planet, and because they only allowed that to be set up and that status to be given to only one person in society, everybody else was supposed to believe they were something much, much less than that. Well, you can see how radical Moses is being here. He's telling these Israelites who were former slaves who had been mistreated for hundreds of years. He's telling them that it's a lie. What the Egyptians have been telling you is a lie, God didn't say that. God actually said, let's create my image, but it wasn't a king, it was the whole human race, so that every human being, male and female, and that was incredible in that day, every human being was to be the representative of God, learning the will of God in heaven and making it happen on the earth. So he's telling these former slaves that they had the dignity, the value, the worth, the importance of any king that had ever lived on the planet. And you can only imagine, we have to just, it's just almost impossible to imagine how difficult that would have been for them to have believed. I mean, they would look at their own lives and say, what am I compared to a Pharaoh? What am I compared to a king? It would have been very difficult for ancient Israelites coming out of slavery to believe that about themselves. Instead, they would have believed, my life is nothing, my life is insignificant. What I do with my life doesn't really matter. We know it was hard for them because it's hard for you and me. I mean, think about it this way, I don't care how you voted in the last presidential election doesn't matter to me, but I can guarantee you one thing. Maybe in this room knows that Barack Hussein Obama is a very important man. Anybody disagree with that? Now why do we think he's so important? It's because if he makes a decision to go this way, the whole world goes that way. If he makes a decision to go that way, the whole world goes that way. And for this reason, we value his life, we even value his health. Do you really want Barack Hussein Obama to have a sinus headache from the Ezeleus and DC right now and make important decisions with the stuff he knows? No. Do you want him to get sick? No. I mean, can you imagine? You don't even want him to have a big fight with his wife. Think about what might happen. They really get into it. I mean, they have a big argument. And at the end of the argument, he says, oh, yeah, you don't like that. Well, watch what happens when I hit this red button. And he hits that red button, the world goes up and smoke. We don't want that happening. We want them at peace and at harmony. We want no problems with the kids. We don't want anything going on with him. That's bad because he's so important. But we look at our lives and we don't feel that way. Instead, we say to ourselves, you know, I already have a sinus headache, nobody even cares. I get the flu, and they just say, well, hope you feel better. It doesn't really matter what I do with my life. In fact, if I have a big fight with my spouse, if I can find a red button in my house and push it, nothing happens, right? And we actually go so far, especially we press materials. And I am one by choice, so that makes me a real one. We press materials, baptize that attitude, and say, that's Christian humility. No, it's a nod. It's exactly what Satan wants you to believe, that you are insignificant. It's not what Jesus wants you to believe. Jesus didn't come to this earth and die for insignificant things. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He came and died for the image of God, a creature that has the importance that matches the greatest king that's ever lived on this planet. He died for people who have that kind of significance in world history. He died for people that have that kind of dignity and worth and value. But it's so hard for us to believe that because we're so afraid of being filled with pride that we constantly remind ourselves every single nanosecond, I am nothing, I am nothing, I am nothing, you are not nothing. You are the image and the likeness of God. And do you know what that means? It means that your life matters. The choices you make from the time you are born until the time you die are choices that are being made by the image and the likeness of God. And I don't care how small you think you are or how insignificant you are in the course of history, there are no little people in the kingdom of God. There are no insignificant people in the Christian faith, not a one. Now you know this is true because you've heard the stories. You've heard the stories of the grandmother who gets her orphaned grandson. And basically she does nothing with her life at all except that she raises this little boy to be a Christian. And he does nothing with his life except he becomes a shoe salesman. But he just happens to talk to one of his customers and his customer goes home and tells his neighbor what he heard from the little shoe salesman. And that was about Jesus. The neighbor becomes a Christian who becomes Billy Graham the Savior of the world. Now in that scenario from the grandmother to the shoe salesman to the friend to Billy Graham which was the significant person. Whose choices mattered? You want to say Billy Graham is the only one that was important? Of course not. Because what that grandmother did was just as important as Billy Graham. What that little shoe salesman did is just as important as anything Billy Graham's ever done. What that neighbor did was just as important as anything Billy Graham's ever done. And that's you. That's me. And until you believe that about yourself, until you believe what the Bible says about you, you are not going to see how important it is for you to give your life to Christ, how important it is for you to do more than just live a quiet, private little existence over in your little suburban home and drift away into oblivion. You're not even going to ask the question, what does God want me to do with my life? What role do I have in this thing called building the kingdom of God? What place do I have in the mission? You're not even going to ask the question because you're going to say I have no place. I'm not a preacher. I have no place. I'm not a Sunday school teacher. I have no place. I don't have any gifts like that. Can't sing. Can't play the guitar. Can't play the drums. Can't do anything. I'm retired. Give it up. I'm done. My role in life now is just sort of take it easy, get rid of the pains as much as I can, aches and pains, watch some TV, walk around the block as long as I can, and then die. That's who I am. So long as you think like that, you are right where the devil wants you. You wonder why young people today, so many of them, including ones in this church, ruin their lives by numbing themselves on alcohol and drugs and video games and whatever else they can do to escape reality. Do you wonder why they do that? It's because we have not told them how important their lives are. We have not given them a sense that they are the image and the likeness of God as important as any president or any king or any queen that has ever walked on this planet. And if they will give themselves and service to God, they will see the world change because of them. I mean, when was the last time you told your grandchildren that? But you see, that's the bottom line for understanding why we're supposed to be involved in the mission, because we're the image and the likeness of God. Can you believe that about yourself for maybe five minutes and not fear being full of pride? You're a sinner, okay, you are. That's why Jesus came to take care of that issue, okay? But you're the image and likeness of God, redeemed by Christ, being conformed to the likeness of Him who is the very image of God.
It's a great job title, image of God. It sounds really good. Sometimes job titles don't match up with a job, right? I mean, if I went around today and asked a lot of you, what do you do? You might tell me, well, I'm an executive vice president of this, that, and the other, or I'm the sole proprietor of this business, that business, I run this, I do that. And you know, I'd be impressed because usually job titles are supposed to impress people. But if I went with you tomorrow morning to work and saw what you did, you might say to yourself, you wouldn't be very impressed because what I end up doing is mopping the floor because the guys didn't come in who are supposed to mop the floor, or I spend my whole day working on spreadsheets. That's a great job. Or I'm on the phone every minute of every day of my life. And so, you know, it's a great job description or title, but now the question is, what about the job description? What's the image of God supposed to do? Is it as good as it sounds? Well, do you remember what said in verse 28? And God blessed them and said, mind you, he blessed them. This is a good thing. He blessed them and said, be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over it. It sounds pretty good, at least on the surface. Because get the picture here, you've got Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And this is a mistake a lot of people make. They think that the whole world was the Garden of Eden. It wasn't. Eden itself was a special place that God had particularly blessed. And then the Garden of Eden was even more special than that. It was so special that it was the only place, as far as we know, on the earth that God would come in his glory. And he would dwell there with them. He'd come there in the afternoon when the sun was going down and things cooled off in the cool of the evening. And he'd come there. And he'd be there in his special presence because that was the one place on the earth that was suitable for him. And that suited place was limited. And Adam and Eve were put in there to serve God there. But did you remember what it says in verse 28? Was that enough? Was that all that Adam and Eve were supposed to do? No. They were to be fruitful and multiply and fill what the Garden? What were they to fill? The Earth. They were to subdue and have dominion over the Garden? No. The whole Earth. And when you look at the end of the Bible, you understand why. It's because the picture of the Earth at the end of the Bible when Jesus comes back is that Jesus will make the whole Earth new. The whole Earth will become like the Garden of Eden. The whole Earth will be sanctified and made holy and made beautiful by Jesus. And then God will come, God the Father will come in his glory and not just a one tiny little spot, but he will come and light up the whole world with his glory. You see, the goal was not for one little piece of the Earth to be appropriate for God's presence. The goal was for the whole Earth to be turned into that because that is the way that God is going to demonstrate against all naysayers, whether they're spiritual creatures or physical creatures, he's going to demonstrate by making the whole world into his beautiful kingdom and coming here and dwelling here, taking his throne up here, filling it all with his glory, he's going to demonstrate against all naysayers that he is the creator, that he is the all glorious king of everything. That's what we mean when we say that everything is for the glory of God. It means that one day this planet, which is the field of operation for the kingdom, the demonstration place is the place the proving ground for who God is, who's the true God will find out for sure when the Earth is turned into a place that's suitable for him to be glorious everywhere and to fill it all with his glory. The way the Apostle Paul put it in Philippians was, when Jesus comes back, every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of the Father. Or as he put it in Romans 11, from him, through him, and for him are all things to him be the glory forever. You get the picture? That's where it's going. Well, that's not where it started, where it started was one little spot with God's glory coming there. But in the end, the world is going to be lit up with the glory of God so that the sun and the moon are insignificant. How's that going to happen? What's the means? What's the tool that God's going to use? Well, we might think that it's going to be God himself, but it's not what the Bible says. The Bible says that the way this is going to happen is through you, the image of God. Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over it. It's your job. God invested so much in the human race that when we rebelled against Him, it wasn't just the human race that was cursed, the whole creation was cursed. That's how central you are to the history of the universe. You, you are that central to the history of the universe. In fact, humanity is so important that rather than setting us aside after we failed and failed and failed, instead of setting us aside and God saying, I'll just do this myself. That's not what He did. The Father said to the Son, you become one of them and you do as a human being, you do what they have failed to do. I'm afraid sometimes we, in our circles, we focus so much on the death of Christ, now we're thinking a little more about resurrection, not a whole lot, but a little bit. But we think that the only thing that Jesus ever did was die for our sins and that's all that's important about Him. It's not true. Jesus became one of us to do what we have failed to do. What did He do? We failed to obey God, he obeyed imperfectly. He died on the cross so that people like you and me who fail can be a part of the success of the image of God and bringing God's glory to the earth. And more than that, he was given his just reward of resurrection from the dead. Jesus deserved to be resurrected. And then he was given the throne of his father, David, now where he reigns over all things until all of his enemies are put under his feet. And Jesus is the one who will come back one day and finish the job. Jesus, God, yes, but Jesus, the man is the one who is doing that. He's one of us, and he did it. He's the one that will fill the world up with servants of God, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth. He's the one who will create holy society, holy humanity, holy civilization on this planet for the glory of God. He's the one that will do it. That's why we don't go back to the Garden of Eden in the end of the Bible. We actually go to Jerusalem, the New Jerusalem, that he's building right now in heaven. It will drop out of the sky one day, right on this planet, and it will be yours. That's how great he is. I get to do these, what they call, trial laws at universities around the country. I don't know why they keep inviting me, but they do. And they usually have a rabbi and a mom and a Presbyterian preacher. You've heard that joke, haven't you? You heard the one about the rabbi, the mom and the Presbyterian preacher. I'm the Presbyterian preacher in that. And the first time I did this, I was surprised by the question, the first opening question. And I had like two seconds to figure out what to say. And the question was this, what's unique about your religion? You got 30 seconds. Gosh, I'm sitting there going, what am I going to say? Then it came. And I just said it. I said, what makes Christians unique in this setting of these three religions is this. It's Jesus. And I explained to them how good Jesus is. He's not like Moses. He's much better than Moses. And he certainly is better than the prophet peace be upon him. Muhammad. Jesus was so good that he did everything that we were created to do, the whole human race. And that's why we love him. That's why we trust in him because he deserves where he is now. And we trust him to fix everything in the future. It's all about him for that reason. That's why you have faith in him. That's what it's all about, having faith in him, that the world will go where it's supposed to go, that God's purposes will be fulfilled for this creation, that he will prove that he is the king of all things through Jesus. And that's why you love him. That's the story of the Bible. If you didn't know it, that's your religion. And if Jesus fails to do that, you pick the wrong religion. I think he's done enough for us to believe he'll do the rest. But that's what faith is all about. Now, Jesus let us know that he had done all that when he gave that great commission. You've heard it, Matthew 28. You remember how it starts off? He looks at his disciples as he's about to ascend into heaven and he says, all authority and heaven and earth has been given to me. Now, that's quite a statement. Because in his divinity, Jesus always had all authority and heaven and earth. But now he's saying, authority and heaven and earth is now being given to me. So is he talking about his divinity? Say no, please. No. What's he talking about? His humanity. Right now today, a man rules over heaven and earth. He was saying to them, I'm all that. I did it. I was that good. And I'm getting my reward for it. That's how great I am. Now, you might think that that would then have an implication since Jesus is going to do it all, since he's the only one that's been that good, since he's the only one that could actually say, you know, all authority has been given to me. You might think that what he'd say next is, guys, sit back and watch the show because you won't believe what I'm about to do. I mean, after all, if he's going to do it all, what world do we have except to just watch it? You know, oh, that's right. You've got to make sure you're a Christian, but once you become a Christian, just sort of sit back and watch Jesus take care of this thing. And don't worry, he will. He will. That's one of the great things about it is that when we do divorce ourselves from the mission, and we sit back and watch it, he'll still do his job, don't worry, it's going to happen. But it's not what he said to his disciples. He didn't say, everything's been given to me, I'm all that. Now you sit back and watch, what did he say to them? He said, go there for and teach all nations. That's the mission, you see. What he said to them was, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue it and have dominion over it. You see, the sin did not start our mission. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Nothing so trivial as that started your life, your purpose, and the purpose of this church. Nope. He complicates the mission, no doubt about that, makes it really messy. But it's not the beginning of the mission. When Jesus says to us that we are to be teachers of all nations and baptizing them and teaching them to do everything that he told us to do, he's saying to them, he now is time because of everything I have done, I'm going to give you my spirit and with Holy Spirit's power, you can transform the world. I know that's hard to believe, I know it's hard to believe that we can transform the world now because in our backyard it's not going so well, but get your eyes out of your backyard for a moment. Stop watching Fox News for at least a week, it'll help. And get your eyes on the rest of the world. And you'll begin to see that the kingdom of God and Jesus' gospel is wildfire in other parts of the world. It's not going so well here, but don't get discouraged. It's doing great in China, unbelievable. There's not a missionary story been there, it's seen it, it's true. It's doing unbelievable things in India, just phenomenal things in India. Africa is on fire with the gospel. It is absolutely breathtaking to see what is happening in other parts of the world. Just like it once was true here, it's now true there and even greater measure. So you have no reason to doubt, you have no reason to fear, Jesus is doing just fine in his kingdom. But he looks at us and he says, look, I'm not telling you to tack on something to your life. I'm telling you, this is why you exist. Everything you do, going to work, playing with the kids, watching TV, going on vacation, fishing, hunting, hunting, whatever you do, sewing, knitting, whatever you do. This is the mission, talking to your neighbors, inviting the Muslim that lives in your neighborhood over to the barbecue, don't serve pork. Instead of your Christian friend, reaching out as the church, being known in Gainesville, Georgia as the most outreaching, loving, kind, interested in you church that's here, is your mission. It's why you were made. It's why you breathe. Sometimes I think I'm the only person to get up in the morning and ask the question, is it worth breathing again? I think most people get up and breathe because they're afraid of the alternative. I'm not afraid of the alternative, not in the least bit. There's not one piece of me that's afraid of dying. So when I get up, I say, should I do this again? I think almost everybody needs to get to that point at some point. Why am I continuing to breathe? And the answer is, you're the image of God. God puts you in this world as the instrument by which he will make this world his magnificent kingdom. And you've got Jesus who will fix everything that you left, that you leave undone. Can you believe that? If you do, then this year, when they ask you, as they are right now, to make the faith promise of this church bigger than it's ever been before. Do you know they're asking you to do that? How dare they do that? I think credible. But if you understand why you're breathing on this planet, you'll understand it's not something as trivial as taking care of your mortgage or making sure you can still go on a vacation this year. You'll understand that the reason that you're breathing is for the mission. The faith promise this year ought to be twice as big as it was last year. And it will be, if you believe what God says about you. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, thank you so much for doing what we could not do. Thank you so much for making it possible for us, sinners, weak as we are, to be a part of what you are doing in this world. Give us the assurance by your Holy Spirit that what your word says about us is true and that it's worth it. We are prone to wander from this and prone to believe what the world tells us about us that we're nothing. And so we're prone just to feed ourselves and to numb ourselves with toys and with play so that we feel like maybe we can make it through this world. Would you please give us the assurance of who we are in you and what our mission is in life? Amen.