Richard, welcome for the fourth and final time this weekend. It's been great having you here, and we are, we know so much more about you now, and third mill that our prayers will be with great knowledge, much more knowledge, and faith because we know we've seen what God is, what is doing, so, welcome.
Can you? I'm losing my voice, it's Auburn. I don't know what it is, but it may come and it may go, we'll do our best, okay? If you have a Bible, you want to turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 9. I have not preached so many times from the New Testament in a row, it's weird. I like the New Testament, I read it once, it's good. But we all know that Jesus Bible was the Old Testament and that's what I've given my life to, but what's in here comes from the Old Testament, so that's okay. 1 Corinthians chapter 6, I don't feel bad, I just sound bad, so don't be sad for me. I'm not working too hard or anything like that, it's just a matter of, you know what it's a matter of. 1 Corinthians chapter 9 is one of my favorite verses from the Corinthians letters, beginning in verse 19. For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all so that I may win more to the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win the Jews to those under the law I became as under the law, though not being myself under the law, so that I might win those who are under the law, to those who are without the law as without law, though not being without the law of God, but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are without the law, to the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak, I have become all things to all men so that I may, by all means, save some, I do all this for the sake of the gospel, so that I may become a fellow partaker in it, let's pray together. Jesus, these are words from your apostle that express his heart, and we are your people, and we want this to be the kind of heart that we have to, and we pray now that as we turn to your word again, and as we contemplate the mission of the church that you'll be pleased to bless us, send Holy Spirit to us, Lord, overcome my voice, give us energy to give attention to these things at this late hour of the day so that you may be praised and you may be glorified. Amen. You know, when you go to different parts of the world, sometimes when you first get there, you know immediately that you're in a very, very different place. I suspect that if you were to go with Kim, who was just up here and go where she was going, you'd know immediately, this is not Kansas anymore. I can remember the way it was for me the first time I went to Mongolia. I got off the airplane and started walking toward the terminal, and right there in the middle of the runway was a cow, and it wouldn't let me get to the terminal. I turned left, and it turned that way, I turned right, it turned that way, it had a way for two men to come out and wrestle the cow off the runway just to make it into the terminal. I knew immediately I was in a very different place. But there are other places in the world where you can go, and you can sort of be fooled into thinking you're still in the same place you used to be, that it still is Kansas. And one of those places would be Australia. And I can remember, you know, they sort of speak our language down there, and I can remember one time being in Perth, Australia, and I was out jogging, and I had a headset on listening to the radio, and they were playing our music over here, you know American music, and everything seemed just the same, and I'm struggling to continue to jog, and it was a hot day, and there was this truck coming down the road toward me. And as it got a little bit closer, it was maybe three or four hundred yards away still, but as it got closer, I decided, well, I'll go ahead and start going across the road. I'll fix an amosia across the road, so I don't bother him, so I'll go ahead and get in the road and start to cross the road. And he starts blowing his horn at me. It was the weirdest thing. I mean, he's still a hundred yards away from me, and he's blowing his horn, and boy, is it a loud horn. And somehow or another, some bird whispered in my ear, that's not the truck, and I looked over my shoulder, and there was a big Mac truck, about 15 feet behind me, almost running right over me. I had forgotten I was in Australia, where they drive on the wrong side of the road. You know how it is in this country? You look left, and then you move on out, then you look right, yeah? Well over there, you have to look right and then look left, and if you don't, you get run over by Mac trucks, like I almost did that day. I barely escaped with my life that day. Now you know, that's the way it is when you go to different parts of the world, and it's also the way it is when you live in one place. Sometimes your home changes radically so that you can't ignore anymore that it's changed. I mean if we were to have a major world war, Auburn would be different. If we were to have a pandemic, Auburn would change overnight. If we had an economic collapse in this country, all of which by the way could very well happen, things would change very quickly. But normally that's not the way it happens. Normally what happens is things change slowly, and they change so quietly, you don't even notice they have changed. And then all of a sudden before you realize it, things are so different, you're about to get run over by a Mac truck. Welcome to the PCA. The Apostle Paul in his life, as he would travel from one place to another, faced the reality that the cultures around him were changing on him. And so in this passage he talks about how he was able to succeed in a changing world as he would go from one city to another to another as he met with this group of people and that group of people that were very different from each other. And the Apostle Paul had a way of doing this that can help us as we face the slowly changing, this sort of quietly changing world that has suddenly become obviously different from the world many of you grew up in and the world that I grew up in. Now those of you who are under the age of 25, just you can go to sleep, okay, because you grew up in this world, you know this world. But the rest of us, we're sort of looking around ourselves, still going, what's happened? What's going on? How did the world change? And I didn't realize it. When I turn on the television, I hardly recognize the words they're saying anymore. I can hardly go to a movie when I walk down the street, people dress funny and they talk strangely and they say things that are not polite to say anymore. But apparently they think it's okay to say them. The church changes. Churches around me have changed. All these things have happened and what's happened to us is we in that changing world have just tended to circle our wagons a little bit smaller, into smaller and smaller circles. And as we circle as wagons smaller and smaller, things seem to stay the same inside the circle. So our contacts and our approach to life has gotten narrower and narrower, feels safe, feels the same, but you know you can only circle the wagons so small until you can't form a circle anymore. And then everything around you crashes in on you.
And frankly, as somebody who's been ministering in our denomination for over 30 years now, wow, can you believe that? But I became a minister and I was 12, so not that big a deal. I did become a minister and I was 22 so that lets you know a little bit about where I am. But for someone who's been ministering in our denomination for over 30 years, it is apparent to me that we are at a crisis. And the crisis is that we haven't realized that we're in a different place and if we don't learn how to handle it, the Mack truck is going to run over us. How's that for a little alarm? Now it may not happen in your lifetime but I'm not really concerned just about you. I'm concerned about your children. I'm concerned about your grandchildren. I'm concerned about their children. That they have a Bible believing church. That they have a church that stands for this branch of the body of Christ and the things we hold dear. I'm concerned for them. And what we decide to do in our day will determine to a large degree whether or not they have a church like this to attend. Now as the apostle Paul went around to different kinds of places, he realized that in his own life and in the lives of other people, there were certain obstacles that would come up that would keep him from being an effective minister and would also keep people like you and me from being effective in our Christian walk. And what I want us to do is to look at this passage and identify the obstacles that he identifies because what he's saying in this passage is I've overcome these obstacles. That's the way I've been able to do this. And the first obstacle he talks about here is this, the obstacle of maximizing personal freedom, maximizing personal freedom. Did you hear what he said? Look again at verse 19. He said, though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all so that I may win more. When he says, though I am free, he really meant that much like Americans mean it. I mean, is there any word that means more to us than the word freedom or liberty? We hear it all the time in the news, don't we? Isn't that what's bad about our enemies right now? They don't like liberty? They don't like freedom. They don't want that. But we do. We want it more than anything else. It's so much a part of the fabric of American life that we just assume that that's the way God wants things to be. In Paul's world, he was a Roman citizen. He didn't even buy his citizenship. He was born a Roman citizen. And that meant that he had the kind of political freedom, social freedom that you enjoy. It meant whenever he came to a roadblock, all he had to do was say, I'm a Roman citizen, probably say it in Latin, and they would pass him through. Do you know what that meant for Paul? That meant that the Apostle Paul could have literally spent his entire life on the French Riviera. Rome owned France at that time. He could have gone to the beaches of the Mediterranean, those beautiful beaches, and he could have been there and he could have spent his whole life as a beach bomb. And nobody could have said, you can't do that. Because he could have said, hey, I'm a free citizen of Rome. You know, this country was actually founded on the assumption that God gave people the right to pursue what? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Yes, we consider those things inalienable rights. Now frankly, I believe that's one of the worst heresies has ever been perpetuated on the church. That God has somehow given us the inalienable right of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But I'm not so against it because in the days when our fathers and mothers said those words, they lived in a very different age than we do. Liberty meant something different for them than it means today. Freedom meant something very different. Let me illustrate it this way. I have a friend who's been in the state penitentiary, pardon me, federal penitentiary system for about 15 years now. And he's a good friend and I've talked to him several different times as he's been in prison. And for a period of about three months, he had done something bad and he was in solitary confinement for three months. Solitary confinement, can you imagine it for three months? And I asked him, I said, how in the world did you survive that? How did you survive being locked up in a room? He said, I survived it this way because there was one hour every day when I got to get out of my little cell. I was all alone, but I got to get out of my cell and walk around a courtyard that was about half the size of this room. And I could look up and I could see the sky. He said, I lived every day of my life for that one hour of freedom. You see when you're in solitary confinement walking around a little courtyard with blue sky above you feels like freedom. And that's the way it was in the early days of this country because our forebears were actually living at a time when the government and the church was trying to control their religious life. It was, they were trying to tell them when to pray and what to pray and how to pray and when to go to church and when not to go to church and when to do this and when to do that. And so they resisted that. And they said, we want freedom. But what that meant for them was the ability to walk around a courtyard and look up at the blue sky occasionally. But today when we talk about freedom, we're not talking about that kind of situation. Today when people talk about freedom, what they mean is this, I should be able to do every single thing I want to do so long as it's not infringing upon you doing every single thing you want to do. It's my God-given right. Freedom has actually become self-destruction.
Now you might say to yourself, oh yeah I think that's really true because I can see that in the gay community. I can see that in all kinds of different situations like drug abuse and things like that where people think it's their right to destroy themselves like that and to destroy other people around them in the name of freedom. And it's true. We can see it in other groups, but friends it's true inside of here too. We think that somehow the most precious thing in life, it's almost in our DNA as Americans is to live our lives the way we want to live our lives. Isn't that true? We want to maximize our personal freedom. Now you just saw an example of a young woman who had every political and cultural right that you have. Did you notice something about her? She had every opportunity you have. Did you notice something about her? She gave up that liberty. She gave up that freedom. Can you imagine, but did you see her face? And she was looking at you and me, she was looking at bored people, but did you see her face? Do you think she's losing life or do you think she's gaining life by giving up her personal freedom? That's the reality because the Apostle Paul says, hey, I'm a free man, but I've become a servant to everybody. It's my choice as a Christian. You know the reality is God has not given us the inalienable right of freedom. He's given us the inalienable right and privilege of service. And that means that every single one of us as we consider the mission of the church, we've all got to come to the point where we're able, I think, to put our finger on something, to put our finger on some way in which we are curtailing, shortening, trimming off some of our maximizing a personal freedom and saying, you know, I could do that, but I'm just not going to for the sake of the kingdom of God. I could get a plasma TV for every room in my house, but you know, I'm just not going to do it. One is enough. I could get a new car this year. I'm perfectly free to do that. Nobody's going to condemn me. In fact, even in my own church, when I drive up in that new car, everybody's going to say, man, what a car are you God? But you know, this year I'm just not going to do it because even though I have every right to do it for the sake of the kingdom of God, I'm not going to max out my credit card. I'm not going to live on the edge economically. I am actually going to give up something for my life for the sake of the kingdom of God. I would hope that after this weekend, you could go home and talk with your spouse and talk with your children, talk with your parents, and ask yourself just sort of honestly, not in some legal, holistic, heavy-handed way, just sort of honestly, is there something that's right for us to have, that we could have, that we can give up a freedom we could give up for the sake of the kingdom. Paul knew that in order to make it through a time when he was facing different cultures, he had to be willing not to maximize his personal freedom. Have you noticed what maximizing your personal freedom has done to you with regard to the world around you here in Auburn? It has isolated you. Oh, I don't want to learn Spanish. Oh, I don't want to have English as a second language at our church. You know, that would mean Tuesday nights would be gone and have to be here every Tuesday night. Oh, you know, I really don't want to give more money because that would mean I couldn't go out to eat once a month, but the reality is it's our privilege not to exercise that freedom. That's one of the obstacles the Apostle Paul overcame in his own life and his one that we must learn how to do too. Think about your King Jesus and what freedom he had and what rights he had and think about what he gave up for you. Can you imagine where you would be today? If he had not given up the right to be equal with the Father in glory in heaven, if he had not come to this earth and lived the life of a poor man and suffered abuse and died, can you imagine where you would be? If he had not given up his personal freedom, be imitators.
But the Apostle goes on in this passage. He doesn't just talk about the obstacle of freedom. He talks about another big obstacle for us, for me too. By the way, I'm using the word us purposefully because I'm now an old man. Back when I used to say these kinds of things when I was a young guy, everybody thought, well, you know, he's just a young guy, I don't know any better. Well, now I'm an old man. I do know better. And this one is a hard one for me too, but here it is. Paul overcame the obstacle of inflexibility, inflexibility. Listen to what he said. Do you remember in verse 20? To the Jews, I became as a Jew so that I might win the Jews, literally verse 21, to those who are without the law, the Gentiles, as without law. The Apostle Paul says basically this, when I'm with the Jews, I act like a Jew. When I'm with pagan Gentile dogs, I act like a pagan Gentile dog. That's enormous, flexibility in his life. I mean, think about how flexible he was because he was raised in a Jewish home and he was told from the get go that the way of salvation was to keep the law and to keep the traditions of Israel. And if he did this, he would make it into the new world. It would be his. God would bless him if he did this. His mother told him that every day, his father told him that every day. But Paul learned later on in his life that, well, that was actually a lie. And in fact, believing that was actually turning him against the Lord of life, King Jesus, and that believing that and following that, behaving like a good Jew would in his day, was actually taking him to everlasting perdition.
But did you hear what he said? He said, when I'm with the Jews, I'll act that way again.
That's remarkable. I mean, he says that he'll behave like he used to behave when he was on his way to hell for the sake of the gospel. I had a friend of mine who told me she said, I had the 25th anniversary of my sorority. And I got the announcement in the mail. And she said, when I was back in that sorority, I was a wild girl. And now I became a Christian and now a grandmother and all those kinds of things. And she said, I had the opportunity. I said, what did you do? She said, well, I didn't go. And I said, why? She said, well, just because I just didn't want to associate with all that again. And she said that with tears in her eyes, because she said, and I missed the opportunity to reach out to my sorority sisters and I'll probably never see them again. I mean, think about what was in your past? What was leading you to everlasting hell? I can tell you about me. Do you know what was leading me to the judgment of God? The church. How about that? I mean, before I became a Christian, I never sinned. I was so good you wouldn't have believed it. I mean, president of the youth group singing in the choir, you know, I was the perfect little boy. Oh, he's so pretty, he's so cute. He's a fine little Christian boy. And that was sending me to everlasting hell. And now look at me. What am I doing? Going to church. We're wearing a tie again, behaving like I used to. The thing that was actually binding me up and sending me away from Christ, I now go back to the established church. What was it in your life? What was it in your life that you thought was good, but was actually leading you away from Christ and had you found yourself separating yourself from all of that so much that you're unwilling to reach to people who are like that still? But notice, Paul doesn't just say, when I was with the Jews, I became like a Jew. He also said, when I'm with Gentiles, I behave like a Gentile. And keep in mind, friends, his mama told him never to do that. Don't go with those kinds of people. Don't hang out with them. Don't eat where they eat. Don't have meat, sacrifice the idols in your house. Don't go to their parties. Don't do those things. Little Paul, because if you do, you'll go to hell for it. And the reality is, is that that was in his blood too. It was something that was repulsive to him naturally on a human level. But did you hear what he said? He said, I went ahead and did it. I do it. I go to McDonald's, eat meat, sacrifice to idols. I do the kinds of things that pagans do. That's how flexible he was. Now, if you were to ask me, Richard, what might that be in your life? You really want to know what it is? Watching the iron bowl this year. How about that? Is that weird or what? Because before I became a Christian, I never would have done that, never. But as a Christian, that's exactly what I'm called to do. And of course, Auburn won, so it was okay. Right? Well, what are those things in your life where you could say, you know, I just really don't like that. It's just disgusting to me. And when you withdraw from it completely, when you're unable to be flexible in this, what you discover is you're actually isolating yourself from the world. Maybe it's a style of music. Maybe it's a style of dress. Maybe it's a lifestyle. I don't know what it's like around here. But in our neighborhood, there's only one normal family in our entire neighborhood. We have every alternative lifestyle you could possibly imagine within two or three houses of us. And you know the natural tendency in a situation like that is to pull away, isn't it? You don't want to have dinner with the gay couple living next to you, do you? Do you want to have dinner with the Indian couple that's living on the other side of you? Do you want to have dinner with the Presbyterian who's married to a Jewish woman next to you? Is that what you want to do? Do you want to have dinner with the group of people that you're not even sure who's living with who in that house? Is that what you want to do? Of course not. Of course not. But for the sake of Christ, that is exactly what we need to begin to do. He actually said it. Now you may be thinking for a moment Richard, are you going crazy on us here Sunday night? I know you're leaving in the morning. Have you gone crazy? I haven't gone crazy. No, this is just the reality of where we are. This is your Auburn now. And if you are going to reach people for Christ, you've got to know the people who need to be reached for Christ. And they may be your fraternity brothers and your sorority sisters, but they may also be all these people that are in all these other kinds of lifestyles that are absolutely disgusting to you. But the reality is Paul was disgusted by them too. But he reached out to them in the name of Jesus and we must do the same. It's a funny thing about flexibility. Usually this is the way we think. Usually we think if we're just strong and dig our heels in, then we'll be able to resist everything coming against us. If we just become more dogmatic and firmer in our convictions, and we just don't yield at all, then we'll be safe. I mean, that's what we need to do. Well, I know it's counterintuitive, but the reality is that if you don't learn how to flex a little bit here, you're going to be uprooted and destroyed. I have a friend that teaches at Covenant College on Lookout Mountain, and I was at his house a few days after a tornado had come through his front yard. He lived in the woods and the backside of Lookout Mountain. And as I drove up to his house, I'd never seen it before. And I didn't even know that a tornado had come through. So as I drove around the corner into his driveway, I've had my goodness because there were two gigantic oak trees that had been broken, uprooted, broken, and thrown into his house by our tornado. And so I'm standing there looking at this. I mean, these trees were maybe six feet in diameter. It was phenomenal how powerful the tornado was. I noticed something outside of the clearing. You could see where the tornado had come up over the hill because certain trees were broken down, but you could also notice something else. And that is that where that tornado had come over the hill into his front yard, into the clearing in front of his house, there were certain trees that were standing tall. They were unaffected by the tornado. Do you know which ones? The pine trees. I mean, you can imagine the conversations between the oak trees and the pine trees, can't you? You know, the oak trees are looking at the pine trees on a day-to-day basis that you bunch of wimps. You have no convictions at all. You know, you're not strong. You can't resist anything. You know, you kind of go this way. You kind of go that way with whatever's coming around. Then you can understand how the pine trees were mocking the oak trees as they were broken in half and saying to the oak trees, well, who's sorry now? Who gets the last laugh? Because the reality is that when that tornado came over the hill, the oak trees bore down, they resisted. And because they resisted, it was dogmatism. And with firm conviction, they were uprooted, broken, and thrown away, and were moved into the fireplace. But when the pine trees saw the tornado come over the hill, they said, oh, you want us to blow that way? Fine. You want to go that way? Fine. Yeah, we can do this. We can handle this. No problem. No problem. And so the pine trees stayed rooted. They were not destroyed. There's the tough thing for us. You remember in this passage that Paul says, when I'm with the Jews, like those under the law, I behave like those under the law, but I'm not under the law. See, Paul knew he had to draw the line. And when I'm with those without the law, I become like one without the law, but I'm not without the law. I'm with the law of Christ. So Paul knew where to draw the line. He knew that he had to stay rooted, but he didn't stay rooted in what was comfortable for him. He didn't stay rooted in what was convenient for him. He stayed rooted in the word of God, period, put a period at the end of that sentence. He didn't stay rooted and dogmatic about the things he liked, and he preferred. He stayed rooted in the word of God. And because he was rooted only in the word of God, he was able to stand strong when the tornado spun around him. Can you think of things in your life? Can you think of things even in this church that you really want to be dogmatic about? You really do. But deep down inside, you know, this isn't coming from the Bible. This is coming from my preferences. This is coming from what I sort of feel like would be the right way to go. That kind of attitude is like a mack truck running right over you if you're not careful. Because the way to make it through a changing culture like we're facing is to plant our roots deep into the word of God and then flex. And this church will be strong and this church will grow and this church will be a beacon of light for the gospel. So the obstacle of personal freedom, obstacle of inflexibility, but there's a third obstacle here. And it may be the hardest one for us. It's the obstacle of a tiny hope, a tiny little dream and being satisfied with the tiny little thing. Did you notice something all through these verses? Look at verse 19 again because there's a phrase at the end of verse 19 that is repeated in a variety of forms all through this passage. Why did he become a slave to all? Notice what he says, so that I may win more, win more. And all through here, he keeps on saying that. He says, I do this to save some. I do this to save more. I do this to save more. I do this to get more people in. I do this so that the numbers can increase. It's an amazing thing to me. But there are churches around us and I'm sure they're right here in this community where the only thing they ever talk about is how many people are coming to their church, how many people have made professions of faith, how many people, how many people on and on and on it goes. And our natural tendency as we look at ourselves is to say, well, you know, they're doing all of that. Well, we're sure not going to be concerned about it. We're not going to mention how many people. We're not going to be concerned about things like will there be any stars in my crown? By the way, that hymn you just, we just sang tonight at the story to the nations. It's in the baptism now. Why? Because baptists tend to be concerned about numbers, don't they? Charismatics tend to be concerned about how many people they're reaching for Christ. And what we tend to do is to say, ah, we're not going to be concerned about that. What we want to be is holy. That's what we want to be. And we want to be right. And we're not concerned with how many people are coming to Christ. But here at the Apostle Paul says here, he says, I do every all, I do all of these things. I live my whole life for one thing. And that is to win as many as possible, to win as many as possible. You know, one time that happened and I picked up the phone from the person and I answered it. And I started giving the person on the other end of the phone a hard time. And it was a retreat of Episcopalians. And I was just giving the person a hard time just joking around. And it was the person's bishop. But I wasn't good to move. So I don't do that anymore. Okay.
You know, we have to be careful that we don't react to other groups. That's my point. And somehow justify a lack of concern for others. Do you realize how much the Bible talks about numbers, numbers of people, from Genesis to Revelation. It's a deep concern of the Bible. You remember with Adam and Eve in the very beginning, what did God say? He said, I want you to be fruitful and I want you to multiply and I want you to fill the earth with the image of God. God was not happy with the idea of there being just a handful. He wanted the whole world filled up with them. Numbers were very important to them. What did he say to Abraham? Abraham? I'm going to give you so many children. You can't even count them. Why? Because God is in the business of making lots of servants of His who are going to worship and honor Him. It's the way He displays how glorious He is is by having more and more and more people worshiping Him. And what even does the book of Revelation tell us? It tells us that at the end it are going to be a handful of people. No, we're going to be standing shoulder to shoulder around the throne of God and the new heavens and the new earth. The earth is going to be filled up with the image and the likeness of God. Numbers of people should be important to us. It's not the only thing that should be important to us. Not numbers at any cost, but they should be important to us because numbers represent people and people are precious in the eyes of our God. We're talking about the image of God here. We're talking about the likeness of our God who are lost in sin, who are lost in self-destruction, and who are doomed to everlasting judgment. And if our hearts don't break over that scenario, if we are not concerned that there be large numbers of people in Auburn who come to Christ for His glory, for the fulfillment of His purposes, then we do not understand the heart of our King Jesus. One of the biggest obstacles we have is this. We in our branch of the church can hear that numbers aren't so good, that we're not having very many converts, that we're not having very many people come to Christ. Oh yeah, we have churches that are growing. We know that's true, but you know our churches that grow are basically sheep stealing. You know that, don't you? You know, we find some baptists and get them to pray to receive John Calvin into their hearts.
Right? So our church is grown by sheep stealing, not by conversion. And so we say to ourselves, well, we know that's true, but we really don't care. And we just keep on marching down the same path. And the result of that for your children and for your grandchildren and for your great-grand children is going to be devastation. So why should you start talking to your neighbor again?
Why should you talk to your fellow employees again? Why should you want to see people come to Christ and actually risk your reputation to talk to them about Jesus again? It's because your vision, your hope, your dream should be like the Apostle Paul's. I'll do anything to win more. I'll do anything to win more. I'll overcome the obstacle of my personal freedom. I will overcome the obstacle of my inflexibility. And I'll overcome the obstacle of my tiny little dream. And I'll do what Christ has called me to do. That's what missionaries have in their hearts and their minds. And friends is no longer the case that some of us are missionaries and the rest of us ordinary Christians. We're no longer safe in this place. You're no longer in the citadel. You're no longer inside the fort. There are no more walls. You have circled and I have circled the wagons so tightly that you can't circle them anymore. There's no safe place anymore. The only way to create safe ground, the only way to create a place where you can say things are going well and things are moving forward and the kingdom of God is growing even here in our land is for you and me to overcome these obstacles. And so there's no longer the ordinary Christian and the missionary. You are now on the mission field. Our denomination right now in its central offices in Atlanta is trying to wrestle with what's the difference between mission to the world and mission to North America and increasingly the answer is no difference because now America is the world. What then is the difference between West Africa and Auburn?
And what's the difference in the kind of Christian you need to be in West Africa and Auburn? The answer is practically none. So I appeal to you as someone who cares about you and cares about this church and cares about our denomination and cares about what we stand for which are precious to me. That you hear what the Apostle Paul said and that you realize that it's not Kansas anymore and look over your shoulder because there's a Mack truck coming and if you don't overcome personal freedom, inflexibility and this tiny little dream it's going to run over us. But if we will overcome it we can do more than just get out of its way. We can actually see the kingdom of God come to earth. Christ's great kingdom shall come to earth the kingdom of love and light. It can actually happen right here. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus how magnificent you are to give up your personal freedom and how magnificent you are for being so terribly flexible with us and how magnificent you are for having such a great large dream. Please grant to us your heart and your mind so that we may live as you lived. Amen.