Hope Church LV Sermons
How Will They Hear?
We are living in a world that is in crisis. From the bloodshed that is happening right now in the Middle East to the political unrest in Southeast Asia, or the financial meltdown in Europe, or the moral collapse in America, we are living in sad and unsettling times. And I know that you are very well aware that as of today, we are in our country 30 days away from a little election if you haven't heard, right? If I hear one more person say, "I approve of this message," I think I may absolutely throw up. I know that the presidential election in our country is important. I also know that it's very divisive. Any time you gather a group of people together in a church, one of the beautiful things about the church is that the gospel penetrates every section and every segment of culture and society. And so when we all get together, that means there's a lot of diversity of opinion and ideas. So I understand that issues like political elections can be a very divisive issue. And those of you who know me and have heard me speak for any length of time at all know that politics is not something that I delve in in preaching the gospel. But I do want this morning, as I begin the message, to just say a couple of things to you as we think about this next 30 days in the world that we live in. And here's the first thing I want to say to you. As a Christian, every Christian should vote. Every Christian should vote. The Bible teaches that as followers of Jesus Christ, we are to be responsible citizens in the regions and countries where we live. And part of being a responsible citizen is exercising your right that has been purchased by the blood of our forefathers to vote. We should participate in the process as Christians, but in participating in the process, let me remind you to not exercise your right simply based on party rhetoric, television ads or news commentary. You and I have a responsibility and that responsibility is to a biblical worldview. Let me encourage you, as you prepare for the next 30 days to get along with the Lord, to examine the issues from a biblical worldview. And that means all of us, regardless of what party affiliation we have or what political background we were raised in. It requires us to go through a mental and physical exercise of taking off some lenses and trying to understand what's going on in our culture and in our society, not from our perspective or from one particular news channel's perspective or from any political party perspective, but what does God say in his word? And then I have a responsibility and you have a responsibility as a Christian to exercise our right to vote from a biblical worldview in a way that honors the Lord. And every one of us is responsible before the Lord to establish that for ourselves. I'm not endorsing any candidate. I don't even know yet what I'm going to do. I'm going to use the next 30 days myself to pray because this is an extremely complex election. There's a lot of complexity to understanding the issues from a biblical worldview and it's not clear-cut and it's not easy. So let me encourage you to exercise your right from a biblical worldview. There's a second thing I want to say to you, presidents, politics and party platforms cannot and will not ever bring global change. I want to say that again because the fervor with which sometimes we talk about this is Christians, communicates that somehow we believe that the agent of change is going to come from Washington, D.C., politics, presidents and party platforms cannot and will not ever bring global change. The only hope for our country and the only hope for the world is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now we applaud and we celebrate but does the passion with which you live your life and exercise your freedom of speech communicate to the world around you that you really believe that the only hope for change is the gospel. You see legislation, laws and political parties cannot change a man where he really needs to be changed and that is on the inside. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ can change a man from the inside out. That's why Paul said and our choir just sang in Romans chapter 1, Paul said, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes." Let me tell you what that means, Jesus changes lives. Can I be honest with you, if I didn't believe that I'd close this and go home today? The reason I'm here this morning is because I believe that the gospel that Jesus changes life. How many of you have had your life changed by Jesus? Let me see your hand. Say amen about that, amen? Hey, Jesus changes lives. Listen to me. When lives get changed, families get changed. When families get changed, communities get changed. When communities get changed, cities get changed. When cities get changed, regions get changed. When regions get changed, nations get changed. When nations get changed, the world gets changed. The way to change is not in an election or a political platform. The way to change is start today, communicating and preaching and proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus can and will bring change. Everybody all right? I just felt it important that we calibrate a little bit. If we're not careful on either side of this issue, we can get caught up in it like we think this is really the change. You do remember when Jesus gave prescription about how to relate to government and when the gospel first exploded on the scene, the government was a wicked dictator in Rome who was executing Christians in the Colosseum by throwing them to the lions, taking their heads and mounting them on posts as lights to illuminate the city. If the gospel and Christianity can thrive and survive in that environment, we're going to be okay come January 1. This is not the end of the world. The one who doesn't need to be voted in is still sitting on the throne and he is not getting off any time soon. So it's important that we calibrate. And we not get too caught up in things that are, listen to me, temporary, temporary. We must as Christians participate, it's our responsibility before the Lord, but we cannot lose our perspective in the midst of our participation. Paul said it this way in Romans 10 verse 13, look at this, for whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be, what does it say? Let's read it together, 1, 2, 3, 4, whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved. Do you believe that today? Do you believe that whoever in Las Vegas, anybody, whoever in Las Vegas believes on the name of the Lord will be, what, saved? Do you believe that's true anywhere in America? Do you believe that is true anywhere in this part of the world? Do you believe that's true in the Middle East and in those places in Southeast Asia? Do you believe that? Then the greatest thing we can do as Christians is take the gospel of Jesus Christ to the peoples of the earth. Listen to me, no election is going to make a Muslim terrorist my friend, but the gospel can make him my brother. Now we love Romans 10, 13, but have you ever read verses 14 and 15? Verses 14 and 15 are two verses in the Bible that stop me in my tracks as much as any verses in the Bible. If you have your Bible, I want you to open a Romans chapter 10, I want to read verses 14 and 15. Now you know what verse 13 said, "Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, amen?" Verse 14, "How? How then will they call on Him in whom they've not believed? And how will they believe in Him in whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent just as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things?" Oh, I believe whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved. How can they believe in Him whom they have not heard? All in a beautiful way here unpack some very powerful truth for us that I want us to wrap our hearts around this morning. I want to give it to you in a series of statements. The first few I'm just going to mention and move right past, but I want you to catch these. Here's the first one, "Everyone who's been saved has called on Jesus." That's what he said in verse 13, "Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved." Everybody who's saved has called on Jesus. For me it happened when I was a freshman in college at the University of North Alabama. I called on Jesus and He saved me. Every one of you this morning that are a Christ follower has a story where you called on Jesus. For some of you, it was in a church service where you heard the gospel and you embraced the gospel. For some of you, it was sitting around the kitchen table. For some, it was on the side of the road as you were listening to a radio broadcast. For some of you, it was at a camp or a retreat. For some, it was watching a conversation on television. For some of you, like me, it was in a bedroom where I knelt down beside my bed. Everyone who's been saved has called on Jesus. If you believe that, say amen. Let me give you the second statement. Everyone who called on Jesus believed in Him. You see, the reason I cried out to Him was because I believe the word "believe" here is a word that means "to be firmly persuaded as to something." There came a point in time when we were convinced in our heart, we were convicted by the Holy Spirit of God. And our response to that was to call on the name of the Lord. Everyone who's called, "believe," you see, the reason I called on Jesus is because the Spirit of God convicted me of my sin and convinced me of the truth of Jesus and that is believing. This idea of calling and believing are almost simultaneous. Belief produces this calling on Christ. Everyone who called on Jesus Paul says, "How can they call on Him in whom they've not believed?" Let me give you the third statement. Everyone who believed in Him first heard about Him. Paul says, "And how will they believe in Him whom they have not heard?" You can't believe in something you've never heard about. The word "heard" here is a word that means "to be informed." It's the idea of learning through hearing. Listen, aren't you thankful that you heard about Jesus? I want you to take a minute and I want you to think about how you heard the gospel. How did you first hear the gospel? Was it a preacher? Was it a mom or a dad? Your grandparents, maybe? Another family member, maybe a brother or a sister or an aunt or an uncle. Maybe it was through a friend, somebody that knew Christ and loved you and shared Jesus with you. And you first heard the gospel through a friend, maybe it was through a co-worker, somebody who worked with new Jesus and they began to live the gospel in front of you and they took time and they shared the gospel with you. Maybe you heard about Jesus on television, maybe watching a Billy Graham crusade somewhere in the world and you first heard the gospel through the message of Billy Graham on television or maybe watching some other Christian TV program or movie, but you heard about Jesus through television. Maybe you're somebody, we have a lot of languages represented in our church, maybe you heard about Jesus first from a missionary. Maybe a missionary came to your country and they shared the gospel, the good news of Jesus and you came to Christ by hearing through a missionary. I want you to hear that question again. How can they believe in Him whom they have not heard? Can you imagine what it would be like to have never heard about Jesus? What if you were alive today and you've never heard the name Jesus? We can't even, Jesus is so much a part of our, every fabric and fiber of our lives is integrated and woven into who Christ is and what I can't even in my mind. I can't even imagine never having heard. There are approximately 196 nations on planet Earth. Depending on who you get your information from, they vary for five depending on what they count, but roughly 196 nations. In those 196 nations, there are represented 11,000 people groups. You say what's a people group, I'm glad you asked, I'm going to put a definition up on the screen, here's a people group, a group of people, isn't that good? Who have the same language, culture, history, customs and family clan identities, that's a people group. A people group is a group of people with their own language and culture. In the 196 nations represented on planet Earth, there are over 11,000 language groups of people that make up those nations. Some nations aren't like America where we have one universal language. Some nations have many, many languages inside of the particular nation, 11,000 different people groups. I want to put a number up on the screen. The number is 6,700 unreached people groups. You say what does that mean? Here's what the word unreached means. It means they have little or no access to the gospel. Now these 6,700 people groups on planet Earth are made up of 1.5 billion people. Now to give you some idea of how many 1.5 billion is, if you started counting to 1.5 billion today and you counted one number every second, it would take you 55 and a half years to count to 1.5 billion. There are 6,700 language people groups in the world representing 1.5 billion people who today have never heard about Jesus and have no access to Him in their language. I want you to let that sink in for a minute. I want you to think about these questions. Paul says, "Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved." How can they call if they've not believed? How can they believe if they've never heard? And 1.5 billion, which is almost one fourth of the population of the planet Earth, have never heard the gospel. Now some of these people groups do have a few Christians in them, but at most best case it's under 2 percent. To give you again a framework to put that in, if America, if we as a nation were an unreached people group, we have over 23,000 cities in America. That would mean per city in America that would be less than 180 Christians per city. Imagine Las Vegas and the only people that had ever heard about Jesus ever in their lifetime in Las Vegas could sit in this section. Now we're going to fill this building up today almost three times, and we're one of a few hundred churches in this city, and this city is grossly unchurched compared to the rest of America. I want to put another number up on the screen, 3,684, say what does that mean, 3,684 of these people groups are what the mythologists call unengaged. Here's what that means. These 3,684 are not even on anybody's radar. This is 55 percent of the unreached people groups in the world representing about 800 million people, which is almost three times the population of the United States, and not only do they not have the gospel, there are no Christians in their language, they have no access to the gospel, but there's not any mission, agency, church, denomination, anywhere in the world that's even trying yet to get the gospel to them. Hudson Taylor said the Great Commission is not an option to be considered. That's a command to be obeyed. Now think about this with me, and I know for some, this is a real stretch to even think in these terms this morning. There's been 2,000 years since Jesus gave us the Great Commission, and one fourths of the world's population still has never heard the message of Jesus, and here's what's even more tragic. Almost every one of those 11,000 people groups, almost every one of those one and a half billion people that have no access to the gospel, almost every one of them have already had tried or tasted Coca-Cola, and Coca-Cola is a 125 year old company that's established to make a profit. And here we sit 2,000 years this side of the Great Commission and people that have Coca-Cola still don't have the gospel. 21 years ago I sat in a church service like this, listening to a man named Greg Grove from Minnesota preach a message called the Supreme Task of the Church as the Evangelization of the World. I was sitting about right over here where Ted is sitting in that service. I remember like it was yesterday, I've never heard this stuff before, I was like some of you, some of the things I'm sharing with you, you've never heard this before, I was sitting and he started sharing this, I didn't know what to feel. I was embarrassed personally, I was shocked, I was appalled, and in many ways the last 21 years of my life have been wrapped around that moment. When I became convinced that God birthed the church, not to be a gathering place where we could just meet each other's needs, but God birthed the church that we could come together to take the gospel to the peoples that have never heard it before. That morning he shared a quote by a man named Oswald J. Smith and I want you to hear this quote, "Why should anyone hear the gospel twice before everyone has heard it once?" I don't know about you, I'd probably heard the gospel hundreds of times before I surrendered the control of my life to Christ. And there are people in the world who have never heard at all. You say, "Pastor, why are you sharing this this morning? Here's why." Don't miss next weekend. Next weekend we are going to be unveiling for you a people group. It's a people group of a couple of million people that's one of the 3,684 people groups in the world that's not on anybody's radar, but that number is about to drop to 3,683. Because as a family of faith we are adopting and embracing this people group that today have no gospel in their language, no Christian, no church, and we as a family of faith are going to develop a strategy that may take 50 years and I don't say that in just. There may be preschoolers in our nursery this morning who in their lifetime will get to see a church planted among these people. Next weekend we are going to be revealing for you some of the specifics, but as a family of faith when God birthed our church, he had the nations on his heart. Let me give you the next statement. Everyone who's heard about him did so through a messenger. You heard what Paul said, "How shall they hear without a preacher?" Now I know what some of you are thinking, "Go get him, Pastor Vance." That's not the word preacher that he's using here. The word preacher here is not describing the office of pastor who stands and teaches and preaches the word preacher here is a word that simply means to announce. It's better translated messenger and it simply means one who makes the gospel known. And here's what he's saying, "How can they hear unless somebody tells them?" Now in one sense all of us are messengers. Every one of us in the moment you gave your life to Jesus, let me tell you what you became, a messenger in your neighborhood, in your house, in your school, in your workplace, in your city. Every one of us in one sense are messengers, but as we think from a global perspective, think about this 1.5 billion. I want you to think about this question again and here's the way the message translates it, "How can they hear if nobody tells them?" There has to be a messenger, let me give you a definition of a messenger as I'm talking about it this morning, here's a messenger. It's someone who responds to God's call to plant their life in another culture or context to make Jesus known that's a messenger. You know what I pray? My prayer is that out of our fellowship, God will call some messengers who we will get one day to stand up on this stage and will lay hands on them and will commission them as they respond to the call of God to move their life, their family, to this people group, this culture, this context, and on our behalf they go as a messenger to share the good news of Jesus. Listen, you want to make rich missions real personal? Let somebody sitting close to you be the name on the sheet that we're praying for yesterday morning. My family put our daughter on an airplane, Southeast Asia. She's going to be there for over three months as a messenger and she's intentionally going praying through God's long-term call. We intentionally laid it out so that she would miss Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years because if you're going to pray through a long term, I'm not talking about two or three weeks or two or three months, I'm talking about where you go plant your life for the next 40 years. If you're praying through that, you need to understand the cost and the sacrifice. Let me just say from experience, when it's somebody that's close to you, you pray about it different than you do when it's just a name on a page. There are some children that are growing up in this ministry called Hope who could be the messengers, I got a little eight-year-old back there. She one day could be the messenger that God would plant. Have you ever even thought about God, you, me, see what I mean? We need to calibrate a little bit, we need to get our perspective. Is God calling you as you're hearing this this morning? Is the spirit of God gripping your heart in a first step where you're wrestling with the question, could it be me? Let me give you the last statement, every messenger has to be sent. Paul says, how can they preach unless they're sent? The word sent means to be sent out on a mission. Let me say it this way, as followers of Jesus, when we think globally, some of us are messengers, but listen to me, all of us are senders. I'm going to say that again, because I want you to leave here today seeing yourself differently than when you came in. When we're talking about God's global mission, some of us are messengers. God will call some to relocate their life to a different culture and a different context to make Jesus known. Some of us are messengers, but listen to me, all of us are senders. When God brought you to Himself, when He saved you, when you became a part of the Kingdom of God, you became a sender. Let me show you what a sender is, here's the definition, someone who shares in the life of a messenger to make Jesus known. Have you thought about yourself as a sender? You see, you're either a messenger or you're a sender, there's no other role to play. You're one or the other. There's not an option to pass. We're messengers or we're senders. Do you understand that? Do you see yourself that way? You see, God gave you the job and platform He gave you, not so you could enjoy retirement alone. God gave you the job and platform that He gave you, listen, 'cause you're a sender. You're a sender. Let me just quickly give you some ideas of what it looks like to be a sender. Praying, senders pray, they pray. Paul said it this way, "Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving, praying at the same time for us as well, that God would open up to us a door for the word so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I've also been in prison, that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak." That's Colossians 4 verses 2 through 4. We are to pray. One of the ways we join in God's activity of sending is we pray. Listen to this quote by a strategy coordinator from China, listen what He said. The single most important ingredient to any movement of God among an unreached people group is prayer. This strategy coordinator recently saw a thousand new believers and 150 churches planted in three months among an unreached people. As you and I pray, listen, we're gonna share some information with you about this people group, and we're going to teach you ways that you and I can pray. We can be a part of sending the message by praying. Let me give you a second, giving. We can send as we give. There's so many passages in the description. I'm not gonna take time to read it this morning, but in 2 Corinthians 8, the Bible describes how the early church began to give and give sacrificially when it comes to this idea of sending. When you leave this morning, as you leave the service, you're gonna get a copy of this little pamphlet that says, "Hope for the World 2012" on the front of it. Starting this Wednesday night, running through the weekend, and I'll talk more about it in just a minute, we're having our annual "Hope for the World" conference. As a part of that conference, one of the things that we do with that is we always set some kind of a giving goal, and the resources that are gonna be given in this "Hope for the World" offering, the resources that we're 100% investing outside of our church. In this pamphlet that you're going to get on one page of it, it describes that offering called the "Hope for the World" offering. There are three different levels or tiers to that offering, depending on how much we as the church family sacrificially give, it will determine the level to which we can engage in some of these areas next year. So here's what I'm asking you to do over the weekend of October the 14th and October the 21st for two weekends, we're gonna receive this "Hope for the World" offering, and here's what I'm asking you to pray about. I'm asking you to pray over the next two weekends about giving an extra week's tie. I'm asking you to pray about it, not everybody will be able to do that, some will be able to do much more, but over the next two weekends, I'm asking you to pray about whatever your normal offering would be here at Hope to pray about over two weekends giving an extra. It does mean we'll all have to sacrifice for my family to do that, we're gonna have to make some sacrifices to do that, but we're talking about a sacrifice so that people's that have never heard the gospel can hear. So I'm asking you to pray about that, senders pray, senders give, give you a third characteristic, senders care, caring, it's what it looks like to care is to meet needs beyond physical and financial as we begin to lay out this strategy. One of the things we'll do is we'll begin to care for these messengers that we send, and that may look like phone calls, or emails, or note cards, or care packages, just ways to come alongside these missionaries and encourage and support them beyond our praying and beyond our giving. I'll give you another characteristic of what it looks like to be a sender, it's serving. By that I mean serving on short-term mission teams, one of the things that you'll be hearing about is the opportunity to serve on short-term teams, some of them to some of our other partnerships in the world, some of them over the next few years will begin to take into this part of the world that's never had access with the gospel, will begin to do humanitarian relief and business and job skill training to use those as platforms to build relationships over which the gospel can be carried into some of these parts of the world. You say pastor isn't that somewhat risky? Well, anywhere you take the gospel where it's never been heard before there's risk, there's no doubt about that, but if we as the people of God are not willing to embrace risk when we've heard clearly, God speak, listen, we can trust Him, we can trust Him. The other way you can be a sender is by inviting, say what does that mean? That means to share with others about God's activity and invite them to be involved. You see one of the roles we play as a sender is to be an advocate, to share with others about the opportunity to join in the big picture of what God's doing. Everybody who's been saved called on the Lord, everybody who called, believed, everybody who believed, heard, everybody who heard did so through a messenger, every messenger has to be sent. And Paul closes these verses by saying, how beautiful, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things. We don't even get the significance of that in our culture, in the Eastern culture, the foot is viewed as something that is very dirt, as a matter of fact, if you ever travel with us to the Eastern parts of the world, some of the things we do in America, like we prop our feet up or we'll cross our legs and show the bottom of our foot, you never do that in some of these other parts of the world. It's one of the most defensive things you could ever possibly do. So for Paul to even mention the feet, here's what he's saying, man, when you bring the gospel, even the feet are beautiful. How beautiful are the feet. Now, I know what we're thinking, Pastor. When we, as one church, really make that big of a difference among the people of two or three million that have never heard the gospel before, well, let me close with this story. September 4, 1807, Robert Morrison, the first Christian missionary to ever step foot in the country of China landed there among the people that had no access to the gospel, China. September 4, 1807, when he arrived, somebody said, do you expect to have any spiritual impact on the Chinese to which he responded, no, sir, but I expect God will. For 25 years, he labored. After 25 years, he finally had finished the translation of the Bible into their language. And after 25 years, he finally saw 10 people come to faith in Jesus Christ and he baptized the first known Chinese believers after 25 years. By 1853, another young man stepped foot on the country of China. His name was Hudson Taylor. Hudson Taylor had been inspired by Robert Morrison's story and Hudson Taylor moved his self to China. After being there was inspired by God to come back to his home and he established a missionary organization called the China Inland Mission in the 1860s and that particular mission agency became, in its time, the largest Christian mission sending agency in the world. Now here we sit today, it's been about 200 years since Robert Morrison's first step foot on the country of China. Did you know that today in China, the largest people group movement in the world in the history of Christianity is happening, 30,000 to 40,000 people per day are coming to faith in Jesus Christ and the country of China. I don't know when the Lord is going to come back. Last year, 20 years, 50 years, 100 years. I do know in Revelation chapter 5 it says around the throne of Jesus there will be people from every tribe, every tongue, every people, it's ethnos, which is language and culture group and every nation. And some of the people that are going to be there are going to be from a people group on the other side of the world that we're going to share with you about next weekend that we're going to adopt and sometime in the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years we're going to see a church born there and who knows, 200 years from now, by the tens of thousands, it could be being ushered into the kingdom of God. How will they hear? [BLANK_AUDIO]