Missions weekend - I sought for a man

Arising from the sacrifice, all life lays down in adoration. He is taken away from the faces. He is here and away.

O Jesus, fill my heart. Now let's come to the Word of God. Without turning to it, let me remind you, as it's on notes and news, that in Ezekiel chapter 22 and verse 30, you get that statement, particularly in the authorized version, I sought for a man.

I shan't be dealing with the context of that passage, but there we have it anchored, the concept of God seeking for a man, or seeking for men. Now let's just move to the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, because there you get a triumphalistic statement in the 17th chapter. I'm sorry, in the 11th chapter and the 15th verse.

Let's read it together. It's the indented part, the one between inverted commas at the end of the verse. Revelation 11, 15.

The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign forever and ever. And then move over to the 17th chapter and to the 6th verse, where there is reference at the end of the verse to the blood. Not the blood of our Lord Jesus, though you do find that frequently referred to in this incredible final book in the New Testament, but the life supply of energy poured out as martyrs by many, many, many people.

The blood, for the life is in the blood. The blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus. And just to make the statement sense, right at the beginning, I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints.

The blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus. There's a great man in the third century AD by the name of Tertullian, and I imagine it was that verse along with others in the New Testament that triggered his comment, which has now become so well known, it's almost registered as a verse of Scripture in the thinking of people. Though, as I say, it came from this man who was a lawyer and converted to Christianity, a very brilliant man, one of the most brilliant theologians that the church has ever produced.

And he said, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. It seems somewhat paradoxical that I have invitations to speak in conferences in various parts of the world on missions, and in some places in the UK, but rarely have the opportunity so to do here in the Tab, the church where I fellowship and which I love most of all. But here is an occasion where just from my heart, instead of giving a reasoned, systematic theology study from a particular passage of Scripture, there's an opportunity of sharing with you the burden of the Lord towards the evangelization of the world as deeply anchored in the whole of Scripture.

Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? I sought for a man. Those two expressions from the heart of God in the Old Testament indicate the method in which He will bring about what is declared in the book of Revelation, the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever. How? I use the word in its generic sense, as you find it in Genesis in chapter 5, the word man, embracing not just man but also woman.

How does God bring this about? I'll give it to you in the formula of an Old Testament prophet. God, Jonah, Jonah, Nineveh, Nineveh, God. I'll give it to you in the life of our Lord Jesus.

The Lord God, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, the world, the world, the Lord God. Now, which is the weakest link? Well, it has to go back to the Old Testament formula, and instead of Jonah, you substitute yourself. You see, the greatest problem that God often has is not so much with the world as with His church.

And the reason why I apply the formula not just to Jonah but also to the Lord Jesus is because by contrast to Jonah and his defectiveness, his deficiency as a missionary and evangelist, you see the obedience of our Lord Jesus. For undeterred, He goes to Jerusalem, spreading the gospel during those three years of public ministry, knowing that at Jerusalem, finally, He will be done to death in the most horrible way. And there is no power on earth that can dislodge our Lord Jesus from achieving what is contained within that formula because He came on this earth to do the will of God.

Now, although it's incredible and it has the angels bemused, astonished, God does love this world, not only to the extent that when man fell as opposed to when angels fell, God's own Son provided the remedy, but He loves the church to the extent that He will use the church and the church alone for the distribution of the essential word of salvation to men and women. Angels would rush to do His bidding. Archangels would be volunteering in order to have the job.

But no, He restricts the work of gospel proclamation to the likes of you and me. He looks for men. So, He takes in Old Testament times Abraham from the Ur of the Chaldees and brings him to the Promised Land and gives him a job.

Later, He will take Joseph and He will have him in Egypt so that ultimately, despite the negative circumstances through which Joseph passed, he shall be in a position to preserve the security of the children of Abraham. And then He will bring Moses and He will bring him central stage and despite Moses' objections, He will use Moses to bring the enslaved Hebrews back to the land that He promised Abraham. The whole college of the prophets, they all declare this that God seeks for men.

God uses men. And when the beloved Christ is on earth, He does not spend much time with the thousands. He does, but not much time.

He spends the greatest part of His time with a handful of men. And when He takes His leave from this earth, after His horrific death and His spectacular resurrection, He points to those men and He points to the world and He says, Go and teach all men. Go in My name.

Baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. And lo, I am with you always. God uses men.

God uses women. And He will bring the whole of our world to that particular point when every intelligent being will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. The kingdoms of this world shall, they must, it is declared by God.

The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of His Christ and He shall reign forever and ever. And to achieve that, God has a force in this world which is utterly unstoppable. I refer to the community of the redeemed, the likes of you and me.

God is bringing His purposes out, even in the twentieth century. Do you know, I have argued in various places that we have lived in our lifetime through one of the most phenomenal epochs that there has ever been in the story of man. Thirty years ago, I will narrow it down to that length of time.

It would have been impossible to have predicted the world stage as we find it today. The shifts and the changes have been absolutely phenomenal. What seemed to be unreached and unreachable territory has opened up by the sovereign decrees of God.

He has brought it about at the human level through natural means, but those who have eyes to see can only discern that God is in control of this sin-stained rebellious world despite evidence to the contrary. Because of the nature of this address, I'll be more anecdotal and more personal than normal. Some years ago with Ruina, we had the privilege of sailing on the maiden voyage of MV Lagos II.

It having been repaired and equipped for evangelization in the port of Amsterdam. Some of the work being done by men from this fellowship. The ship sailed into Leningrad.

To the pastor's conference, which totaled around 50 delegates, came two from Moscow. One, I believe, was the general secretary of the Baptist churches. The other was one of his assistants, and I recall showing him around the ship.

And he said to me, did you ever hear the story of the vision of Leningrad? And I said, no. And he went on to tell me that 70 years ago, when Vladimir Ilyukullinov, otherwise known and more easily pronounced as Lenin, got to Moscow, a woman in Leningrad had a vision. Now Leningrad was not normally called Leningrad.

It used to be called St. Petersburg. The city of St. Peter. But Lenin was to so put his stamp upon Russia, that one of the major cities seceded its name, the name of Peter, to that of Lenin.

And this woman had a dream of a white ship, which would one day come down the man-made canal into the heart of Leningrad. And it would have on board books and stand for a message, which in God's grace would prove once again to be more powerful than the message of Marxist-Leninist philosophy. And this man from Moscow said to me, this has got to be the ship.

I buried that conversation in my mind and then thought of things later on in terms of what he had said and what was to happen in the Soviet Union. Interestingly, when the ship left the port of Leningrad two weeks later, the leaders of the ship were given the opportunity to pay for the birthing of the Logos in the port of Leningrad. And the options were you can pay us in dollars, you can pay us in rubles, or we'll settle for 40 Russian Bibles.

The only time, as far as I know, in the history of OM that the bill has been paid for in Bibles occurred then. And I have a facsimile of the receipt because I thought people perhaps wouldn't believe it. Later on, you know what happened.

There was the breaking down of the monolithic structure of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev and now Yeltsin. And the emergence of a number of countries which were part of the USSR whose names you and I hardly knew.

A spirit of nationalism broke over. And Russia became a cauldron of political confusion. But the positive thing was, as far as the Gospel was concerned, the political conditions were such that there was an ease, an easing of the restrictions on evangelism.

And as a result, Gospels and literature has poured into those countries. Not just in terms of thousands of copies, but tens of thousands of copies. And the Jesus film people in their headquarters, I believe, in Vienna cannot cope with the request for the Jesus film to be shown throughout what used to be the USSR.

And Leningrad, the citizens there determined that no longer would their city be called by the name of Lenin. They went back to St. Petersburg. And there in Gdansk in Poland, which actually saw the beginnings of the revolution that we have experienced in these last three decades or so, the bronze statue of Lenin was toppled to the ground and the statue was placed in the furnace.

And the recasting of the bronze was in the form of church bells. And on a Sunday, the call to church in Gdansk is from the bells which used to form the statue of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. The Lord will have them in derision.

The Lord will have the last word. And so there has come about this change, not just in the political arena of what was USSR, but also there has come about a transformation out in Southeast Asia at such a rapid rate that it is almost unbelievable. Turn the clock back to the beginning of the century, try and find a Christian in Korea, and you will be hard-pressed to find such.

Now go to South Korea. And it is claimed that 30% of the population are Christian. And on a Friday night or an early Saturday morning, it's hard to get your way through the city of Seoul because of the traffic jams caused by men and women leaving the various churches, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Methodist.

They've been there for all nights of prayer. Do you know, as a result of the political holocaust in Korea some decades ago, a number of Christians went from North Korea to Vladivostok during the time of Joseph Stalin. And as a result of their presence there, in what was one of the centers of atheistic communism, a large church grew up amongst Muslim people, the product of Koreans being persecuted and shifted from Korea to the former Soviet Union.

And on it goes. To the extent that though 300 years ago the center of missions was very much this country, it was the United Kingdom that was still anchored at least to some degree to the revelation of God in the New and the Old Testament that caught the vision for missions, and we honor the names of William Carey and his like. And we thank God for those who went and stood by Carey and those who stood by Livingstone, those who blazed a trail in what was the subcontinent of India in those days involving Bangladesh and Pakistan.

We thank God for those Englishmen who went to the white man's grave in Western Africa and lived and died and sometimes only lasted for a few months in order that Africa might yield its millions to the gospel of Christ. But now it's changed. The center of gravity of missions has shifted from the United Kingdom and from the West, and it's been caught by the emerging strong church in Southeast Asia to the extent that just in the month of May some 60 or 80,000 Koreans at a mammoth conference in Seoul dedicated themselves for a period of full-time service in the ministry of missionary and evangelistic work in a variety of places around the globe.

We are living today in one of the most incredible movements of the Spirit of God that there has been since, and I would say even parallel to and beyond Pentecost in its significance. And sometimes, my dear friends, here in the United Kingdom it is necessary for us to look abroad to get the full picture of what God is doing because here we seem to be on starvation rations. Here, for reasons that we don't go into this morning, it seems that we live in meager days when there is a famine of the Word of God, when there is a disenchantment with the established church, but that is not the case throughout the world.

A Scotsman by the name of Cameron Scott went to Africa 100 years ago with a group of valiant men and women, most of whom died within three years of setting foot from Mombasa and moving inland towards Kenya. But today that church is celebrating 100 years of glorious victory. One million people who belong to the Africa Inland Church in Kenya alone, including the president of Kenya.

Half a million in Tanzania. And so the story goes on. But the new recruits, not so much for the AIM, but around the world, the new recruits are coming from Southeast Asia increasingly.

But there are difficulties today. Not every part of the world has yielded with the same degree of cooperation, so to speak, with the Spirit of God as Southeast Asia and Central and Eastern and Western Africa. There is tremendous resistance in North Africa.

And one of the reasons why in Notes and News we have given you an illustrated idea of what is referred to as the 1040 window is because it highlights those parts of the world where there is great need because as yet the religious structures in those countries by and large have not yielded to the superior power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And one is referring to in Western Africa, Liberia, all the way through on the coast right to Egypt and then on into the Middle East to Iran, to Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Pakistan, to Bangladesh. Some 500 million people who are compressed into this land block.

And it's there where we need to be concentrating. The last two pillars of resistance to the gospel of Jesus Christ are by and large Islam and Hinduism. And if this scripture is going to come to pass, as indeed it must, the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of His Christ and He shall reign forever and ever.

Then we should be looking forward to and praying expectantly for the inbreaking of the church back into an area of land where historically in the first two or three centuries she reigned supreme. And this is one of the reasons why here at the TAB we are trying to encourage your concentration and your prayers and in your giving and in the sending of our personnel and in the targeting of radio and the production of literature so that men and women in this land block may have the privilege of listening to, of reading about the great and glorious gospel of Christ. And now although it is true that God says I sought for a man, He doesn't just seek for ordinary men.

I mean when the beloved Christ was on earth it was not just an ordinary group of men that He called to Himself. At one level it was, but they became extraordinary inasmuch as they not only heard what He had to say, they were infected by the power which promoted His ministry and He said, Lord I am with you always. Meaning that as they discovered on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit would come down upon them and as they moved and as they preached and as they rehearsed something of what Jesus was and Jesus is, so that same power of the Lord Jesus Christ was released through their lives.

And they worked in cooperation with the Holy Spirit who is essentially the missionary agency of the Trinity. You see it is He who has sovereign control not only over the affairs of countries at a national level but within the hearts of individuals. What made you be a Christian? You came and listened to Tim Saunders preach? The logic of his argument it caught you? No, God will use logic, God will use reason.

How often do we say that from this pulpit? But near mere reason, mere logic alone will not convert. A conversion comes about as a result of the Holy Spirit who is always previous, He always goes before. And it is impossible to believe that amongst 500 million people there are not those for whom Jesus has died.

And what is being increasingly witnessed in these lands is the phenomenal work of the Holy Spirit sometimes going before missionaries, sometimes preceding radio programs, sometimes in advance of the leaflets and the booklets and the gospels. You see man qua man cannot exist on his own. I have never really met anyone who has convinced me as to their atheism.

You do need something. You need someone. And very often that Muslim as he makes his way through the Koran sometimes discovers that despite what the Koran can teach there is an emptiness.

Sincerity is always rewarded I believe by God as far as the heart of man is concerned. If you seek me you will find me. If you search for me with all your hearts.

There was a missionary last century, Raymond Lowell, who some centuries ago, not last century, who gave his life in the interest of the gospel in Algeria. He was beaten to death in a most horrific way. I've just been reading a book in the early hours of the morning that speaks about a tremendous movement of the Spirit in the very spot where the life of this man was given in the sake of Christ.

The blood of the martyrs becoming the seed of the church. The Holy Spirit hovering over Algerian villages which are not specified on the interests of security. People giving witness to the fact that there was an incredible sensation that they had at night.

They saw some figure, a Jesus type figure, appearing in their room. They heard something that confirmed that there was more than the Koran, that there was a greater revelation of God, a greater message than that of Mohammed. And three or four villagers coming to profess that Jesus Christ was Lord as they stumbled their way towards an apprehension of a greater truth than that within the Koran.

A friend of mine who came here some years ago, Tom Hamblin, told you, if you recall it, though it was a Saturday evening I believe and many of you would not have been present, of the way that he was in Saudi Arabia with his knapsack filled with Bibles and out from a nearby village comes a little decrepit old man who comes to Hamblin and points to his knapsack and wants what is in that knapsack. And when Hamblin takes out the Arabic scripture, the man lets out a groan almost like the labor of a woman in birth and then the groan gives way to pleasure and to joy as for the first time in his life he opens the pages of the Bible and he cries as he kisses the holy book. He now has what he has longed for so very often.

And Tom who tuned in to Saudi Arabia's national broadcast the following day heard the authorities declare that Saudi Arabia is the only country in the Middle East where there is no national church at all, no known Saudi Arabian Christian and Hamblin laughed because he'd been invited by Saudi Arabian Christians secretly to take Bible studies and conferences for them. We are beginning to see not in terms of hundreds of thousands but certainly in terms of hundreds men and women responding to the gospel of Jesus Christ within these lands and one of the reasons for militant, extreme, fundamentalist Islam is because Islam is worried as to what is happening as far as the penetration of some of their armor is concerned in these countries. And so as you can gather for my heart is full and my subject so dear and well researched I could go on and tell you more and more and more as to what is happening in our world today.

God is in control. You say you can't get missionaries into Israel. The sons of Abraham have a right to hear the blessed gospel of Christ.

So what does the Lord God do? He shifts the political situation in the USSR which frees Russian Jews who come back into Israel. The Knesset, the Israeli Parliament cannot stop them because they have rights for settlement but they come as messianic Jews with the net result that some of the messianic assemblies have doubled and tripled in number and the Christian task force in Israel therefore as a result has been increased. God is working his purposes out.

As year succeeds to year the lands of the East will give up their sons. The lands of Africa, the land of sunshine, the lands of Latin America. John Calvin was right.

He, the Lord Jesus, will have supremacy in all things. That therefore means a supremacy of numbers. And it is with optimism that we can take the world and bring it to the feet of our Lord realizing that in the last days evil will increase and hostility will become more and there will be more and more martyrs but on the other hand the growth of the church will be unstoppable.

So what about you and me? To what does that call us? To greater prayer? That's the secret of the expansion in career at the human level. I've been at businessmen's prayer meetings in career at four o'clock in the morning and I have been amazed at the men who have come. I'm always impressed by people who turn out to early morning prayer meetings especially leaders on the basis that it's costly to do that and wherever there is revival it seems as though the principle of Moses is highlighted, underlined and becomes an effective axiom for Moses sought God early in the morning.

God said to Moses, you want to see my glory? Alright, up early in the morning. Come and by the cleft of the rock I'll show you my glory. And where the church has been at prayer the church has grown.

And where the church has given the church has grown. The greatest contributions to the advance of the gospel of Christ is not from rich congregations. It's generally from the poor.

The poor on average, it is reckoned, give three times more proportion of their capital income than the rich. And if I've sought to teach you nothing else during these years, I have, God be my witness, tried to show you that the generosity within a church for global evangelism is an indication of the maturity of the church and within the sovereignty of God wins the smile of his approval. We can pray, we can give and we can go and where we cannot go, we can help train.

I am more committed to the training of nationals and to the support of nationals twenty odd years on after my travels than I have ever been. And I thank God that this church has amongst the groups that it supports fine men and women who are laboring for him as a result of the prayers and the finance that you make available. I sought for a man.

Isn't it wonderful it's Father's Day and I take that text. You ladies will excuse that because I've pointed out to you that God in seeking for a man also seeks for women. I use it in the generic, in the collective sense.

But we want more men. More men to be involved at the cutting edge of giving. More men to be involved at the cutting edge of praying.

More men following the Lord Jesus as closely as some of these Chinese pastors whose stories I could tell you almost endlessly who've risked so much for the cause of Jesus Christ. So we want to salute our mission task force here at the TAB. Those who work with Fever and AWM in the home base, don't forget their ministries.

Those who are with Operation Mobilization. Those who are with the SIM. Those who are with the AIM.

Those who are contemplating bedding down in Turkey or other parts of the Middle East. We not only want to salute them, we want to tell them again, we're with you. You're part of us.

And in these days, we implore Almighty God. Crack the fortress of Islam. Crack the stronghold of Hinduism.

And yet let your Holy Ghost baptize people. Be that unstoppable force that impacts the world for Jesus Christ. Let's bow our heads in prayer.

Let's bow our heads in prayer. For Jesus reigns within. I am a man reborn to serve my Father.

Your will be done in me, my spirit Christ. My life has found its dignity and purpose. I'm not a creature of brute chance or vice.

To Christ my King I give my whole existence. Now as His man I'm just in poor disguise. I am a man appointed by my Savior to show His love in all I do and say.

His Holy Spirit is my source of power to live in life and point to Christ the way. Lord fill me now and help me seize the moment that as your man I'll serve your cause today. I'll be a man who walks with God in worship.

I'll be a man who walks with man as friends. I'll be a man who loves and serves his family. I'll be a man on whom God can depend.

Lord Jesus Christ my King and my Commander. until my life shall end. I'll be a man who walks with God in worship.

I'll be a man who walks with man as friends. I'll be a man who loves and serves his family. I'll be a man on whom God can depend.

Lord Jesus Christ my King and my Commander. until my life shall end. Father we want to pray for the men of our church.

We want to pray for the families of our church. We want to ask you Lord that you'll enable us to take this land for you and to make an impact upon this world. Lord we need the empowering of your spirit.

We ask that you'll bind men together here in the tab even more than you have thus far. And use us. And use women folk too.

Use total families. Use single people. Men and women for your honor and for your glory.

And in these days when you're doing so much we ask that you'll use us in the achieving of your purposes. Amen. Once again let faith unwind in the heart of darkness let it rise in glory today let it shine to see the world in Jesus' name we shall respond to live for God to save the children to live for the nation we shall respond when the cry is heard in the heart of darkness let it rise in glory today to see the world in Jesus' name let it shine let it shine Father we thank you for today.

We thank you for this service. We thank you that you use men and women boys and girls. Use us we pray.

Help us to see you more clearly. Love you more dearly. Follow you more nearly.

All our lives and all the people of God said and the saints rejoiced.