Abraham No.8 To the nations

In this lecture, I'm going to talk a little bit about how to use the Apostle Paul. Have a few more readings, shall we? Here's the Apostle Paul, and he's speaking to the church in Romans or the church at Rome, and he's referring to what he's been engaged in, in terms of his preaching itinerary. It's the 15th chapter and the 17th verse.

Paul will always give you some idea as to where he's been, if you read his letters carefully. God blessed him incredibly in planting churches, and he tells us a thing or two about the magnificent way in which he's known the empowering of the Holy Spirit in the successful fashion in which he's been able to plant gospel centers around the then known world. Verse 17, Romans 15.

Therefore, I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God. I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me. In leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done, by the power of signs and miracles through the power of the Spirit, so from Jerusalem all the way around to Romania, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ.

It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else's foundation. Now, just in case you thought that when the apostle was moving around, swanning around the Mediterranean area, he was just picking up the sunshine, and that there was no cost factor involved, have a look at what he says in the fourth chapter of 2 Corinthians. He lifts the curtain on his life.

He's a fairly private man, is Paul, and it's not so often that he engages in autobiography. You almost have to tease it out of him, but from time to time, he drops his slip, so to speak. He lifts his guard, and he gives you some idea of the cost factor involved in proclaiming the gospel.

Verse 7, 2 Corinthians 4, But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard-pressed on every side but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.

For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. If you thought that the apostle felt that he was making a tremendous sacrifice, actually he brushes it all off, because when you get to the 17th verse of this chapter, he assesses the cost factor, and he says, Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. Finally, at this juncture in our service, let's go to Ephesians, because their poll tells us that the best way to understand his lifestyle is that of a soldier fighting against someone who uses dirty tactics.

Ephesians 6, 10, Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. That's what I mean, dirty tactics, diabolical plans to disarm you and make you ineffective as a Christian.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything else, to stand. Stand then, stand firm with a belt of truth buckled around your waist, with a breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.

In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me, so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly as I should. Return to those thoughts in a little while, but let's take a traditional hymn, Great is Thy Faithfulness, O God my Father, which is number 200 in Mission Praise.

Stand and sing this great hymn, and we'll receive an offering for the work of God here and our various commitments abroad. O God my Father, there is no shadow turning with Thee. Thou takest not my compassions with Thine own, but still hast been my fore-and-after dream.

Great is Thy Faithfulness, Great is Thy Faithfulness, morning by morning new mercies I see. Lord, I am weak, I am humble, I am weak. Great is Thy Faithfulness, Lord, answer me.

I want to move away from the set subject matter this evening, though I will make some passing reference to it, to give me an opportunity to use a few illustrations from experiences of the past couple of weeks, and to encourage you not only to make a commitment to the gospel of Christ, but also to make a commitment to take that gospel of our Lord and Saviour to those here in Worthing and in other areas of this county and this country, and indeed this world, who do not know that Jesus Christ is Lord. There's a very significant verse in Matthew's gospel which tells us, it's in the almost the final discourse that our beloved Lord preached, that this gospel, that is the gospel of redeeming grace, must be preached throughout all the world. The Greek is ethna, to all the people groups, and then the end will come.

Jesus has indicated that the work of evangelism is so important, that actually his return pivots upon the responsibility of the church being faithful to disclose, to discharge its obligations of telling all men and women about him and his salvation. You remember when Abraham received that promise that he would become the father of a son, and Sarah, his aged wife, presumably with a withered womb, she would mother a child, and the child would be called Isaac. We're also informed that the word Isaac means laughter, and there was great laughter in the heart of Abraham when he first cuddled his infant son to his own breast.

Centuries later, born into our world even more miraculously than the arrival of Isaac, was none other than our beloved Lord Jesus, born of a virgin. And it's said of our Savior that on two occasions in his public ministry, his Father disturbed the scene, the quietness of the scene, the baptism and the mount of transfiguration by saying of Jesus, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. This is my son, hear him.

If there was laughter in the heart of Abraham when Isaac was born, even more so there was laughter in the heart of God when Jesus was born. And the thing that causes our great God continual joy is when the church of Jesus Christ behaves like Abraham and rejoices over the blessings of the gospel. Abraham expressed saving faith in God, believing in God when he could not demonstrably scientifically prove that what God had said had come about.

And the essential of the gospel is to believe that when Jesus died on the cross and was raised from the dead that his death and his resurrection pays the penalty of your sin and guarantees you eternal security. And God is pleased, not just because of the faithfulness of his Son but because of the sensibilities of people to the gospel that they are offered. Now here is the Apostle Paul, and he is fully aware that the return of Jesus Christ at the human level is dependent on the distribution of the good news in a wholesale fashion around the then known world.

Two thousand years have elapsed since the Apostle Paul embarked on his most remarkable ministry, and our Savior obviously is not yet back or else we would not be meeting here. But we have this promise of our Lord that when the church is fully risen to its responsibilities and declared that gospel to every people's group then he will return. The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of the Lord Jesus Christ and he shall reign forever and ever.

History is his story. The future belongs to Jesus. So wise is that man, wise is that woman who endeavors to warm the heart of God by faithfully living a gospel life, illustrating a gospel message, and proclaiming gospel truth.

We are living in one of the greatest eras that the Christian church has ever known. Doubtless if you read preachers in church history they would all be saying the same, but I reckon that my argument is more convincing than my predecessors. That doesn't sound very humble, but I think it is factual.

In Singapore just a few years ago I had the privilege of addressing a broadcaster's conference, Christian broadcasters. Some year or two later a wider conference was held in the same place involving representatives of all Christian broadcasting companies around the world. You may not know that some of the most powerful transmitters that push out radio programs actually belong to the church of Jesus Christ, and from that conference a little phrase was coined, WB2000.

WB stands for World By, 2000 obviously the end of this millennium, and the target was that the ether, the atmosphere would be impregnated with the gospel of Jesus Christ in the language of all major people groups by the end of this millennium. And sources of information that I have from some of these groups seem to indicate that the goal is realizable. Here is the Apostle Paul 2,000 years ago, and he speaks about his agenda for preaching.

He was a man who commenced his ministry, if you please, in Jerusalem, certainly from Antioch, and his agenda, his itinerary took him to so many areas in the known world. And at the end of the letter to the Romans he talks about having fully preached the gospel from Jerusalem to Illyricum, and I gave you the modern translation of that particular geographical area, Romania. The Apostle Doubtless was on tiptoe of expectancy, believing that maybe in his day the good Lord would return, and yet later on in some of his epistles, the last ones that he writes, he seems to project that there will be a longer time span than he originally anticipated.

But I think if the Apostle Paul was here today there would be reasons why his heart would be beating more quickly, why the adrenaline would be going through his bloodstream causing that heartbeat increase because of certain things that have happened towards the end of the twentieth century which have completely changed the face of our world, opening up vast territories, vast political corridors for the penetration of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which just 10 or 15 years ago was so closed it seemed impossible ever to anticipate that there would be freedom of gospel proclamation there. Take for example that beautiful land of Romania. Who would have predicted such a savage, tragic, and deserved end to that dictator Ceaușescu and his wife Helena? These folks who had imprisoned almost this whole country, giving it almost a fortress style of appearance to the outsider, making it almost impossible to penetrate it with the gospel, and yet today Romania is open, wide open, and along with Romania all those new emerging countries, the names of which we in the West find difficult to pronounce, that were actually part of the Soviet Union are now acclaiming their own independence and more particularly give an opportunity for people to go in and take the good and glorious gospel.

I have a letter on my desk at home which I opened late last night when I got in from one of my dearest, most esteemed friends, Solon Kartak. He writes me from Nepal and invites me to a conference there and says amongst other things, Tony, do you know that now we are numbering the church in Nepal in terms of 150,000 people? And I thought of the church in Nepal when first I came to the tab 24 years ago, when you could have put every confessing Christian within this sanctuary, in other words probably no more than six or seven hundred. And yet last year on the streets of Kathmandu there was a Jesus march and even government officials have acknowledged the benefits of Christianity to that proclaimed Hindu kingdom of Nepal.

In my memory as I was aboard Dulas during these last few days, I went back some four years to Bucharest to an occasion when with 30 or so philosophers, theologians, and politicians I was privy to a seminar in which we were discussing, or they were discussing, the possibility of updating the translation of the Romanian Bible. Each of us who'd been invited from abroad was given 10 minutes or so to address the assembled company. And not because I wanted to be patronizing but because it seemed to be right on that occasion.

I said that I wanted to thank the church in Romania that had stood true during the days of Ceausescu because two Romanians particularly had influenced my life for good. And I made reference to Richard Wurmbrand and also to Dr. Joseph Ton who I should have been with two weeks ago but my transport fouled up and I didn't make it. But I hope to see him next week as he'll be in the country in England.

And I referred to Wurmbrand's book Tortured for Christ and how Ton told me that one day he was brought into Bucharest himself and the Securitate told him that he had to stop preaching in Timișoara because if he did not they would blow his brains out. And he said, go ahead. All you'll do is baptize my tapes with my blood and my tapes which are in demand in Romania will have increasing demand if I pay the supreme penalty and have the supreme privilege of offering my blood in the service of Christ.

And I recall an electric moment as a man who I didn't know to be there got up and identified himself as the Minister of Religious Affairs of the new government in Romania. And he said, I want to publicly apologize for the way Christians have been treated during these last two decades. How it would warm the heart of the Apostle Paul to know that not just Illyricum, but north of Romania, Poland and Czechoslovakia, way open to the gospel of Christ.

With what degree would the Apostle Paul add his chuckles to the laughter of heaven to hear that the statue to Lenin in Gdansk made of bronze has been smelted down and recast into, would you believe it, church bells, so that on a Sunday as Catholics and Protestants are called to church, it's the very bits and pieces of what was the bronze statue of Lenin that calls out from the church towers, it is time to worship God. How warm must be the heart of God when he hears of men and women in eastern countries making a response to his great and glorious gospel. You see the Apostle Paul in our passage from Romans warms to the theme that he has been given the blessed privilege of preaching where others have not preached, establishing churches where others have not gone.

And I remember the words of William Carey when he was in Serampore in north India, having established the first and the greatest Christian printing press in that subcontinent, says that to me and to Marshman, my colleague, has been given the privilege of printing the blessed gospel in all the major languages of India. And we have seen over these last 200 years a tremendous advance in the reduction of languages to written fashion, often done by pioneering missionaries so that the word of the gospel could be preserved and then shared with people's groups in various parts of the world. And we honor the work of Wycliffe Bible Translators and other similar groups who are pushing forward the frontier of literature as far as making reading matter is concerned available to those in people's groups who heretofore had not had a copy of the word of God.

What warms the heart of God? Abraham chuckles when he has Isaac to his breast, but Abraham knows that Isaac is the man through whom all the world will be blessed. Work that out historically. What does the writer of Genesis mean? What does Paul mean? What does the New Testament mean when it interprets this promise of God and says that indeed through Isaac's seed, all the nations are being and will be blessed? The answer is that from Isaac's progeny, from Isaac's descendants will come our beloved Lord Jesus, a greater than Isaac, and his death on the cross and his resurrection will atone not only for the sins of Jewish people but the sins of the believing world.

And God's heart is warmed when people make a response. And we are seeing in the most incredible fashion, not just in these countries to which I made reference but also in the Middle East, that bastion of Islamic authority and power and in some respects tyranny. We are beginning to see a movement of the Spirit which if not unique is unusual.

In these days, you know of fundamental Islam and its whiplash, its knee-jerk reaction. The world has never been so well informed in regard to Islam, its power and its clout as a result of the petrodollar. But one of the reasons why Islam is now so militant and so strident arguably is because of the fear of the penetration of the gospel of Christ.

For within that corridor, the 1040 window, from Libya in the west right through to Afghanistan and Bangladesh in the east, more Islamic people are being won for Jesus Christ in these years, in these last two decades than it is estimated all the centuries since the Crusades. Now, whenever there is gospel penetration, whenever there is a change in the political climate, then there is a reaction on the part of the forces of evil. This is why the Apostle Paul, when he discloses something of his preaching itinerary, also honestly says it's not easy.

Writing to the Corinthians, he talks about the way that he's been savage, the way that he's been beaten, the way that he's sometimes clung to a piece of driftwood on the Mediterranean Sea, wondering if the next wave would bring him down to a terrible death by drowning. And when he works out the powers that are behind, the opposition forces that he has to confront, he comes to the conclusion that it's not just a human theater that he's involved in. It's not just plain human warfare.

There are spiritual powers, there are demonic forces, and whenever the Apostle tries to advance the gospel, so there is a repulse, so there is a knee-jerk reaction by Satan himself, and thus you get this bloody counter, this knuckle-to-knuckle fighting which is so honestly recorded in the New Testament. And it's the same today. You see, the Bible will tell you that this world has as its usurper, that is the one who wants to have all authority, none other than Satan himself, the prince of darkness.

That's how the New Testament sometimes describes Satan. Do you want to know what's happening in Rwanda? Do you want a theological analysis of the genocide in Rwanda? Eight million people, 8.5 million people in that African country, 40 percent either killed or in refugee camps within this last year. We're not talking history now.

I'm not referring to the Nazis and the Holocaust and what have you. I am referring to things that are happening today in the life of every young person, in the lifespan of every young person and older person in Worthington. Do you want an analysis of what's happening in Yugoslavia that was, in Bosnia and Serbia that is? Why do people behave in such a fashion? Why do they butcher one another? This is not ordinary activity, is it? And the answer, there are evil forces at work in our world that sometimes intensify themselves in particular geographical and political areas, causing men and women to act with a bestiality that is so outside of the normal human framework of experience you cannot explain it psychologically.

When is God glorified? When is the heart of God warmed? When does God chuckle? And the answer is, when the kingdom of the Lord Jesus, when the gospel of the Lord Jesus penetrates areas which have not been reached with that gospel before, and men and women in their hundreds, in their thousands, in their tens of thousands come to a knowledge of Him. But who is offended? And the answer is the same one who took delight in the tormenting of the beloved Christ on the cross of Calvary, the one who is opposed to the proclamation of the gospel, even the devil himself. So, Paul says we fight not against flesh and blood, that would be easy.

You can take the beating of the Roman soldiers. You can cope with being placed in a dungeon even if you don't, like me, like the dark. But the problem is when Satan gets dirty and when the forces become invisible and when they cause an effect which is difficult to understand in terms of human behavior patterns, but it's into that theater of conflict that every Christian has to go inasmuch as those who are on the Lord's side are asked to declare their allegiance to the Christ.

And by personally going, by investing time in prayer, by sacrificial giving, they do their best to push forward the frontiers of the kingdom because they believe that the most important thing in life is for men and women to hear of Jesus. For Christian people to rewrite the United Nations Charter, we would add at least one further human right, and that is that everybody should hear about the Lord Jesus Christ. No, it's not easy in Romania.

Ceaușescu has gone, but Ceaușescu's spirit remains. The MV Duros, OM's gospel ship, had incredible problems, more problems to face in Romania than it had actually in the Gulf, in Islamic states. Red tape so thick and so long that you could almost have wrapped the Duros round in it.

Opposition. Only explicable by the thought that there's somebody somewhere who doesn't want Romania or any other of the adjacent countries penetrated further with the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, that's the scene today.

It's the time in which we live which one might conclude as being the most remarkable generation, the most remarkable epoch in the history of the church. The possibility is that this generation which has seen Jews return to Israel and such a transformation in political and the religious climate in the Middle East, it could well be that this generation will live to see the return of King Jesus. Every people's group will hear and then the King will be back.

So, in conclusion, there are two important things of which I must remind you or underline afresh, and that is that you know your eternal destiny is secure by you having committed your life to Him. And secondly, that you will do everything in your own power to make possible the proclamation of the gospel to those who don't know. A pilot managed, I don't quite know how, to get himself on board the doulos in one of our meetings before the authorities had lifted the embargo on the ship.

He was a captain of a pilot boat. I said he was a pilot. I meant he was a captain of the pilot boat, the tug that actually, as far as I know, brought the doulos into Constanza harbor.

He spoke fairly good English and he said to me, Sir, I have got four tugboats and I have got 38 men who are under me. Is it possible to let me have one Romanian Bible? It seems to me that in that little picture you've got the cry of millions of people, give us a Bible for our pilot ship so that as we navigate literally, we may have information to navigate spiritually. It is the responsibility of Worthing Tab to ensure that captains of pilot ships, that men and women around the world have a copy of the Bible and have the intelligence, the good news of Jesus Christ proclaimed to them.

That's what warms the heart of God and is the reason why, though he didn't fully comprehend it, Abraham was so glad to have the birth of Isaac, which anticipated centuries later the birth of Jesus Christ, the man who brought delight to the Father and whose Father's heart is warmed when people respond to the gospel that his Son released into our world. Let's pray. Father, whenever we think of the Apostle Paul, that small, hook-nosed, probably not very handsome man, when we hear him saying that he spent his life taking the gospel from Jerusalem to Illyricum and then had got his eyes set on Spain, we marvel at his dedication and long that ours might be the same.

When we hear of Christians like Wurmbrand and Tan, Wang Mingdao, Watchman Nee, and a host of 20th century saints and martyrs, we're stimulated to attempt greater things for God ourselves. We bless you for the world in which we live and the opportunities that come our way, but we long, O Lord, that the forces of evil may submit to the greater forces of righteousness, that peace may come to Bosnia and Serbia, and that Rwanda may yet yield to the glorious claims of Jesus Christ. Father, hear us as we pray for these troubled areas of our world, not wishing to oversimplify the problem, but realizing that behind all misdemeanor at the human level is the satanic influence of evil powers.

We thank you that the gospel represents a superior power, so bless those who take its message into these lands, and bless your children here, and enable us all to embrace the good news of Jesus Christ and thus warm the heart of his Father. Amen. Let's sing once more, and we'll go to that lovely modern hymn, Tell Out My Soul, The Greatness of the Lord.

It's 631, written by a great 20th century Anglican hymn writer, Dudley Smith. 631, Tell Out My Soul, The Greatness of the Lord, Unnumbered blessings give my spirit voice. Tender to me the promise of his word, in God my Savior shall my heart rejoice.

Thank you, those of you who remembered my trip in Romania. I'm feeling somewhat weary today. I had a 48 hours, but I'm grateful, and the Dulos Company particularly send greetings, and Pastor Toto of the Lupeni Church, where this orphanage project which has caused a lot of difficulty for us in recent weeks is.

We've been talking together and hoping that somehow we'll get our way through some of these difficulties. Also been in a little place called Pui, where there's a children's holiday home sponsored basically by the TAB, and to see some of those kids, some of whom have never been outside of the room in which they have been born for three years. To see them on God's good green grass playing away and being well nourished has been a real privilege.

Thank you, those of you who've helped us in this ministry in Romania and elsewhere in our projects that we have interest in at the TAB. Six, three, one. You sang that so well.

I want you to let me indulge myself by making a request. Would you look up on the overheads for 100 Let Me Tell You of My Saviour? It's got the chorus, Glory, glory, hallelujah, our God is marching on. I was addressing Romanian pastors yesterday at two or three sessions.

It seems to be almost traditional in churches there that at the end of the evening service they sing Glory, glory, hallelujah, our God is marching on. Maybe they do it because they remember days when it wasn't so easy to preach the gospel in those countries. There weren't so many freedoms.

Let's take the last verse. It's a song that I've moved the words a little bit around to make them theologically a bit more accurate. So let's take the last verse and the chorus, Glory, glory, hallelujah.

Let the beauty of the Christ life so transfigure you and me that the radiance of his glory shall be plain for all to see. Then with joyful expectation we'll await our destiny, our God is marching on. Glory, glory, hallelujah, our God is marching on.

And father we look for the day when the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of your son and he shall reign forever and ever. We bless you that the church and its message is utterly unstoppable. March on in your spirit through us we pray.