Hope Church LV Sermons
THE MISS10N :: PART 2
In September of 2001, Hope Baptist Church officially launched in the city of Las Vegas. And next weekend, we will celebrate a decade of impact. Over the past ten years, God has given us the privilege to share in His activity in this city, in the West, and literally all around the world. And what you just saw in that video is just three examples of many people who have been impacted as we have served our city, as we have engaged the West, and as we have taken the gospel all over the world. And for me personally, I was first exposed to God's activity in this city when I was eighteen years old. I was a part of a church called the First Baptist Church of Cleveland, Tennessee. And I was sitting in a service just like you're sitting in a service this morning, and one of our pastors got up and said, "Hey, we're sending a short-term mission team to serve the city of Las Vegas under the umbrella of a brand new church plant called Hope Baptist Church." And it automatically stirred an interest, and I had the privilege to be a part of that team. Now, at that point in my life, I had never been to Las Vegas. I had never been to the western part of the United States. I had never worked directly with a church plant, but God used that trip for me as an eighteen-year-old to drastically begin to stir some things in my heart as it related to his kingdom, as it related to the way he wanted to use my life, and as it related to my future in ministry. And after that trip, over the next few years, I took five different trips back to Las Vegas to work with what God was doing through this church. And over the course of those trips, God began to grip my heart. He began to break my heart for this city to the point where in 2005, I officially moved from where I was living then in Alabama out to Las Vegas, Nevada. In the same week, I graduated college, I turned 23, and I moved to Vegas. Obviously, there was a lot of change happening, a lot of transition for me in 2005, and then later on the next year in the summer of 2006, my brother Michael was getting ready to jump into college, and he decided that he wanted to move out here as well, and I remember driving back and standing in the driveway with him and my mother and some friends as we prayed and said, "You know what? Not just one son is going to Vegas, but the other one's coming too." And for about eighteen months, there was a lot of change. There was a lot of transition for my family during that time. And I tell that story to people all the time because they ask me, "How did you get here? Why are you here?" I mean, you get all those kind of questions when you talk like this. And every single time when they'll ask me, "Why are you here? Why is your brother here? Why would your family do that?" I mean, it's not cheaper to live here. The people definitely aren't nicer, no offense. You weren't trying to run away from your family. Why would you make a transition out to Vegas and every time I give them the same answer? The reason I moved to this city, the reason so many have moved to this city, is because of the mission. I came to a point in my life where I felt gripped that if I did not leave what was normal to me and make a transition to a city I wasn't really familiar with, that I was outside of God's will for my life, and it has been one of the greatest blessings in my life to see what was a vision in 2001 become a reality in 2011. I mean, you may not know this, but there have been over 2,500 people in the city of Las Vegas who have began a relationship with God in the context of this church. There have been over 1,400 of those people who have made that profession public through baptism. We have been able to serve families financially, spiritually, and physically. We've been able to plant churches locally and globally. We've been able to engage in community transformation projects all over America. We've been able to train pastors on four different continents, and through that training we've seen over 10,000 people come into a relationship with God. What once was a vision is now a reality, and we're just getting started. And from day one at this church, God gave the pastoral team a passage of Scripture that really clarifies what He's wanting to do in and through this church. And this morning, very quickly, I want us to unpack that very text of Scripture. So if you have a Bible this morning, will you turn to the book of Psalms chapter 107. Psalm 107 is a text of Scripture that early on God really gave Pastor Vance and the team to really crystallize what He was wanting to do through this new work called Hope Baptist Church. So I want to read for us starting in verse 35 and reading through verse 38. And if you don't have a Bible this morning, or maybe you forgot yours at home, we're going to put this up on the screen for you so that you can follow along with us. Here's what the Bible says. Psalm 107 verse 35. He, meaning God, changes a wilderness into a pool of water and a dry land into springs of water. And there He makes the hungry to dwell so that they may establish an inhabited city and so fields and plant vineyards and gather a fruitful harvest. Also He blesses them and they multiply greatly and He does not let their cattle decrease. Now just by reading that passage you can see for a group of people wanting to start a church in Las Vegas in the desert that passage automatically has a lot of significance. And as we continue to talk about the mission this week, I believe this passage gives us three priorities that for you and I, as we seek to reach this city from the platform of Hope Baptist Church, three things that if we do nothing else, we're going to see these three things happen. So I want to give you three priorities this morning that are right out of this passage of Scripture and here's the first one. The mission involves reaching people in our city. The mission, what God has called us to, what God has led us to as His followers involves reaching and discipling people in the city of Las Vegas, the Psalmist here in verse 35. He starts with two very clear images, two word pictures that He lays out. And the first one that He references is a pool of water. In essence He begins communicating that God can make something come from nothing. And the first thing that He says is that a pool of water will spring up out in the wilderness where there's nothing in a barren land, God has the ability to spring up a pool. Now what is a pool? A pool is something that people come to in order to be refreshed. A pool is something people come to in order to be poured into. It is a place of life. And from day one at this church we have said we want hope to be a place of life change. And for ten years we have made a priority out of reaching people with the gospel, sharing the greatest message in history with people, seeing them respond to the gospel and be saved and then discipling them and helping them understand what it means and what it looks like to walk in a relationship with God. And for the next ten years this principle is going to continue to be a priority for us. We are going to make a priority out of life change that we hope in turn changes lives. And to really unpack this principle I want to give you two defining statements that I think brings some more clarity when we talk about the way that God has uniquely positioned every person in the room to effectively reach people as we move forward as a church. Here's the first defining statement, God saved me because he loves me. God rescued you if you're a believer this morning. He rescued you because he is passionately in love with you. He is only by grace, it is a gift that you and I can have a relationship with God through Jesus. He did for us what we could never do for ourselves. And he has invited us into a life of purpose, of hope and significance in his kingdom. It's not because we earned it, it's not because we're good enough, it's not because we worked hard enough to obtain it, it's a gift. I'm going to read you a couple verses that show us this in the scriptures. The first one's from Ephesians chapter 2. The Bible says for by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not as a result of works so that no one may boast. Another passage of scripture that really teaches us his principles in Colossians chapter 1 and says this, "For he, meaning God, rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom as his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." Listen, God saved you because God loves you. Here's a second defining statement. "God saved me because he loves the people around me." While it is very true that he saved those who call on him, those who are his children because he passionately loves us as his children, he also rescued us because he loves the people around us. There is a pattern that we see in the New Testament and it's this, "Tax collectors, fishermen, different people would be exposed to the teachings of Jesus and they would respond by choosing to follow him. And as soon as they responded by following Jesus, they immediately went back to the people who they were closest to. Sometimes it was family, sometimes it was neighbors, sometimes it was coworkers or friends and they immediately went to those people and they shared with them what Christ has done in their life. And in many cases, those people who were close to them also chose to follow Jesus. We see it in the Gospels, we see it in the book of Acts and guess what? That pattern is still true and is still effective today and here's the hope that as our lives are changed, as we understand more and more what it means to walk in intimacy with God that we would go to our families and to our neighbors and to our coworkers and our friends and we would express the relationship that we have with God in hopes that we could reach those people, that we could reach those people with the life-changing gospel and show them what it means to walk in a relationship with God. God saved you because he loves you but he also saved you because he loves the people who are around you. Did you know that 85% of people who come into a relationship with God do so because of the testimony of a personal friend? It's not preaching, it's not video, it's not an article, 85% of people who begin following Jesus do so because they first had a friend who was following Jesus and that friend cared enough about them to share the gospel. Listen, you have relationships in your life that are unique to you and those relationships are a bridge and here's the hope that the gospel would travel over that bridge. There are people who you can speak into their life and you can reach that I can never reach. There are people in my life that you can never reach but I can, why? Because of a relationship and the hope is that those who do know Christ would in turn share Christ with those around them. That's extremely significant. As you and I navigate through every day, we're not just living to work a job, we're not just living to get through the day or to make a paycheck, we're on mission every day. And I pray one of the priorities to you as you navigate through the day is reaching people with the gospel. Because when God saved you, He loves you but He was also thinking about those people. Let me encourage you with something, listen, God loves this city. God loves the city of Las Vegas, He hasn't turned His back on us, He hasn't rode us off, He is alive and at work all over our city and He is uniquely positioned the people in this church to join Him in reaching and discipling the city of Las Vegas. When He saved you, He was thinking about where you were going to be placed so that you might go in turn and reach this city. And if, for some of us, you've moved here in the past year, maybe because of job or a career or maybe you're retiring, listen, you're here to join us. You're here to join in what God is doing in reaching the city of Las Vegas. Wednesday morning, our entire staff team here at Hope took some time and we went out and prayer walked the communities that are surrounding our new South Valley campus. And we just took some maps and kind of divided it up and we just started walking down the street. And I'll be honest with you, it was a time that morning for whatever reason, I was just overwhelmed. I would stand in front of some of these houses and just say, "God, I don't know this family. I don't know who lives in this house, but God, would you save them? Would you bring a Christian into relationship with this family and may that Christian be bold enough and care enough to share the gospel with this family?" And I'd walk to another house that would have for sale or foreclosure or for rent. And I would just stand in front of that house and say, "God, would you bring a Christian discipled family to live in this house? And God, would you put it on their radar and make it their passion to reach this street with the gospel?" God's placed us here to reach the city. And every one of us have unique relationships that we can leverage and somehow pull people in and expose them to the life-changing message of Jesus. The question is, are we serious about it? And we have said since day one at this church that we will make reaching people a priority. Rick Warren said this. He said, "Many parts of your life mission are unique, but there is one part of your life mission that we all have in common. It's this, God wants you to tell other people about what's happened to you." It's our desire that everyone who calls Hope Baptist Church or home would be engaged in the mission. And one of the primary ways we do that is by looking at the relationships that we already have and asking the question, "How can I share the gospel with the people who are around me?" And our prayer is, life change would happen, and that because your life has been changed, it would play a role in someone else's life being changed. The mission involves reaching people in our city, but secondly, there's another priority we see in this passage and it's this, the mission involves planting churches in the West. The mission involves multiplying churches, planting new churches in the West. Look at verse 38 of this passage. The Bible says also he blesses them and they multiply greatly. The word multiply means to increase. The word greatly means with speed. The Bible says as God is at work in different places, he's going to allow increase at a very, very fast rate. And for us as a church, we just put a stake in the ground early on and said we are going to be about the multiplication of churches because healthy things reproduce themselves. And we understand that can happen really in two ways. It can happen through planting churches and it can also happen through planting campuses. We've done both. And as we move forward, it's not going to be an either or, it's going to be a both and. And we're going to plant campuses and we're going to plant churches that understand community transformation, that understand disciple making, that understand the end goal is not the church. The end goal is the nations coming into a relationship with God. That is a priority for us here at our church. Last weekend, Pastor Vance shared some pretty staggering statistics and he put a slide up on the screen that I want to put back up there this morning. And on this slide you'll see four countries, China, India, Indonesia, and the United States. Out of 196 countries in the world, those are the top four lost, meaning separated from God, lost nations on the planet. Number four, that should mess us up. And here's the deal, 40% of the population in America lives in the western part of the United States. Here's the point, when God birthed our church, he did so in the center of the fourth largest numerical mission field in the world. I hope that creates a sense of urgency inside of you. We believe that the most effective way we can penetrate lostness is in the west, is by reproducing church planting churches. And this is an area from day one that we've sought to lead by example over the past ten years, God has allowed us to plant ten churches. And we just made a statement that said, "You know what, we care about lost people." And one of the greatest ways we can penetrate lostness is by planting communities of faith all over the west so that people can have a place to come and hear the word of God taught, a place to connect, a place to understand that it's bigger than just their life, that God desires to use them in His kingdom. Listen to this quote by Darren Patrick. He says, "Those peeking over the fence into Christianity look on the people, who were like them but not like them, who were confident but not judgmental, who were humble but not depressed. Disciples like this are attractive because they don't exude and I am better than you, persona, but just the opposite. And I am probably worse than you, but God saves bad people like us persona." This kind of disciple is grown in the soil of the local church. It is then that the local church begins to be populated with non-Christians who come to find out where these people come from and why they have such hope. Once this begins to happen, you have a New Testament church where believers are built up and the lost are evangelized. This kind of church will plant new churches. That's what we want. It's okay for there to be lost people in our service. Listen to you here today and you don't have a relationship with God. We love you. We want you to experience the hope of eternal life. It's the only thing that matters. And as we reproduce new churches, here's what we're hoping that lost people would see new communities of faith show up and say, "You know what? I want to check out what's going on there." And they can understand that we care about them. And honestly, there's a lot of churches across our country that are very reluctant to engage in church planting. And I know that because I talk to them a lot. And here's what I hear. They say, "Well, we don't have the time right now or we don't have the money right now or we really don't want to lose any of our good people by sending them out or maybe if we just strengthen our foundation a little bit more, then we'll be ready to plant churches." That's wrong because none of those excuses hold water when you hold them up to the light of the Great Commission where Jesus says, "Go and make disciples of all the nations." And for us to hope we've just said, "You know what? We may not always have all the money. It might not be the right time, but we're going to make a priority out of planting new churches that understand disciple-making, community transformation and engaging nations with the gospel." Stephen Gray said this. He says, "Church multiplication is a spiritual decision of a local church to put the needs of a desperate world before self-preservation." And here's why we're so intentional about this. As we plant new churches, we want the DNA of church multiplication because statistics show if a new church does not reproduce itself in a church plant within three years, it never will. So we're trying to be intentional in the front end of planting these churches that understand disciple-making and multiplication. And over the past year, God has aligned us with a new set of relationships and this is so exciting that it's going to allow us as a church to plant churches more effectively and at a faster pace. We have recently aligned with a national church planting network called the Launch Network. And their mission is to inspire and equip next-generation planters to lead strong. And we have become for this network the West Coast Hub. And here's what we've said. Everything that goes on in the West, we want to be a part of it because that's the mission. And here's what we've said. We are going to take assessing, training, and planting new new pastors very, very seriously. And here's the description that we give. One of the happiest days for a parent is the day their child is born. There's no memory that can rival that, but here's the problem. There are numerous pastors that are birthing new churches and it's not the happiest day of their life. Because they're trying to plant a church and their marriage is on the rocks. They're trying to plant a church and they're not even walking with God themselves. They're trying to plant a church and they've never been equipped and trained to do so. So here's what we've said. You know what? We're going to take it serious. We're going to take the assessing and the training and the planting of these new pastors serious. In Nevada, 78% of church plants fail in the first year. Here's what we've said as a church, not ours. We're going to stand before God one day. As a stewardship of these young planters who have a city on their heart and we've said, you know what? We're going to take it serious. But listen, that's just not something a few people are doing. That's something our church is doing. I want to give you a couple of examples and introduce you through picture to a couple people you don't even know about yet. Right now, we have five church planters through our network who are getting ready next year to plant disciple making church planting churches in the West. I want to introduce a few of them to you. Here's the first one. Chaz and Stacey, church well. Their hearts have been broken for the city of San Diego, and so they're going to plant a disciple making church planting church in that city. And oddly enough, they just happened to be in our service this morning. So Chaz and Stacey, would you guys stand up? Will you guys let them know that we love them? Hey, we love you guys. We believe in you guys and we're with you as you go to plant that church. Amen. Amen. Thank you guys. That's one example of a family who said, you know what? We care about lostness. Another family that we're getting ready to plant is Sean and Michelle Peoples. Sean grew up in Hawaii several years ago. God broke his heart for his home state, and so now he's going back next year to plant a disciple making church, planting church in Hawaii. I know there's a lot of people who want to be on that mission team. Another couple is Brian and Shay Carter. They're going to plant a church in Bozeman, Montana, just south of the state capital there in Montana, a disciple making church, planting church. Another couple is Jeff and Sarah Phillips. They're planting in Vancouver, British Columbia, a place that's lost. And we're getting to train these guys and shape these guys to go plant there. One other couple is Travis and Jessica Fox. Hey man, they're going to plant in Salt Lake City, Utah. They're planting a disciple making church, planting church. Listen. That's not what the pastors are doing. That's what we're doing as a church. And listen, as you invest and you give, we're connecting it to the kingdom. We're talking at minimum next year, there's going to be five new churches in the western United States that are preaching the gospel and are places of light in our country. Multiplication is always going to be a big deal for us. We believe it's what God's called us to. The mission involves church planting in the west. One more priority. Thirdly, the mission involves strategic partnerships around the world. This mission that God has put inside of us, this vision involves strategic partnerships around the world. Look at the second part of verse 35. The first image we see is a pool of water, but the second one says, and a dry land into springs of water. Now there's a difference in a pool in a spring. A pool is something that people come to in order to be refreshed, but a spring flows out from where it is and impacts other places. And we have said from day one, we want to be a spring. Right in the middle of this desert, we want life, we want change, we want transformation to flow out that it not only impacts our city, but it impacts all over the world. And here's the deal. In 10 years, God has done this. It's absolutely clear that God has done this. He has aligned us with some strategic partners, some very special relationships all over the world. Did you know that right now we have relationships. We have strategic relationships in South Africa, Zambia, North Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central America. People that every day are getting it done on the field, teaching discipleship, teaching the gospel and planting churches, literally all over the globe. We could have never done that by ourselves. But the gospel runs on the rails of relationships and God is allowing us to be a part of that through strategic relationships. Here's the point. When God birthed our church, he had the nations on his heart. He was thinking about that stuff in 2001. He was aligning conversations. He was aligning meetings. He was aligning relationships so that you and I would get to be a part of something that's so much bigger than we are. And I'll be honest with you. That was the first 10 years. But in the past six months, he sets some things up and he's orchestrated some opportunities that are absolutely mind-boggling. A lot of you know about the opportunity we had this past summer to lead the pastors' conference for the Southern Baptist Convention. One of our goals through that conference was to see a $100,000 offering come in that we could use a portion of to translate the gospel into a people group that never had a Christian witness before. They don't have access like we have access. They're unreached. They're unengaged. Well, God provided. And we sent through a relationship with the International Mission Board, $150,000, amen. And every dime of that is going to take the gospel to a place that it's not currently being shared. That's a big deal. And not only that, but we're going to fund humanitarian relief to come in and bring aid and bring help. And when people say, "Why in the world are you coming to help us?" They can lay out for them through a movie, "The Gospel." And they can have for the first time a consistent Christian witness through that film to help them understand a relationship with God, but not just that. Right now, and y'all need to clap after I say this, right now we're working with some strategic partners, and here's what we're working to do. We're working to impact a people group in the Arabian Peninsula. And it's the people group that 10 years ago on 9/11 came to America to kill our families. Here's what we've said. We're going after them. But in a spirit of grace and humility and urgency, we're going after them with the gospel. We could have never done that on our own, but through a set of strategic relationships we now have an open door in the Middle East that we would have never had otherwise. If change with people, multiplication through church planting, and engaging nations through strategic partnerships, those will always be a priority for us as a church. If we do nothing else, that's where we're putting all of our energy and all of our resources. And we want you to be a part of it. You're in this with us. The stuff we're talking about today, it's kingdom stuff. It's bigger than us. It's going to outlast us. But we all get the opportunity to find significance in God's kingdom. And we have to guard it though. We must be aware that our flesh will always say wait and keep it for yourself. But the gospel says go and share it with other people. And we're going to keep that in front of us as a church because we never want to drift to a place where we're listening to our flesh and we think this is all for us and we should wait to take the gospel. No, the compelling message of Jesus is go and share and we want to be obedient to that call. People planting partnerships. We've got one big question this weekend as we conclude. And Pastor Vance asked it last weekend, I want to ask it again. How can I share in the mission? How can we share in the mission? God's at work. In these verses four times, the Bible says he changes, he makes, he blesses, he does. It's his activity, but he's letting us be a part of it. And last week, we gave a really, really practical way that every person in the immediate can be involved. Pastor Vance gave us a two-fold challenge that I want to give you again this weekend. It's two words, here's the first one, invite, invite. You heard Patrick's story in the video at the first, how did he get the hope? One of his friends said, hey, will you come to me with me to church? Five years later, his life is radically different. You can never underestimate the significance of you inviting someone into this environment because you never know what God might do. We want you to invite people specifically next weekend. We're bringing in Pastor David Nashor to come and share a powerful message of his story and life change. He's going to lay out the gospel and we've asked every person in our church in light of our tenth birthday to invite 10 people to come next weekend. Last week, we asked every person to write one name on a card. Last week, we got 750 cards, prayerfully 750 people at minimum got invited to be a part of our tenth birthday celebration. If you weren't here last weekend, we would love for you this weekend to write a name on a card. Whoever God puts on your heart, as you just think about your circle of relationships and people who don't have a relationship with God, we want you to write that name on your card on this card later on putting in the offering basketball. We want to take serious the chance we have to invite people. What if next weekend we saw 750 to 1,000 people come to Christ? I can't think of a better way to celebrate our birthday. But that's not going to happen unless you and I are intentional about inviting people to be a part of the service next weekend. That's the first challenge, invite. Here's a second way that you and I in the immediate can share in the mission. Second word is invest. At Hope, we value generosity. We say that we live life ready to make a difference in the lives of others. We take that serious and we are navigating through a time right now where finances are very tight. Our city has been thrashed by the economy, meaning everywhere is hurting, including the church. And put on top of that what we're walking through with the new campus that we're building. In essence right now we're making two house payments. We're not only paying for Silverado High School and our ministry center, but we're also paying construction costs on our new campus. So we've asked our church and we're challenging you again this weekend to do a couple of things. From now until the time we move in the building in light of our tenth birthday, we're asking every person in our church to give an additional $10 a week over and above what you're already giving, $10 as a sacrificial investment into God's activity and to celebrate us going into a new decade of ministry. Now I know there are some people in the room and you can't do that and you don't need to feel bad or feel guilty. If you can't do that, then you can't do that because there are others of us who can do more than that. And we're going to do more to stand in the gap for you because we're a family. But a second component of investing that we're asking every person in our church to pray about is that next weekend when you come, you would give an additional 10% in your tithe. From top of what you're already giving that you would give an additional 10% as a sacrificial offering to the Lord to celebrate his activity. And we know that according to how God provides to his people in the next few months, we're going to have to make some difficult decisions because we're not going to put on the back burner, life change, planting our partnerships and we're willing to do whatever we need to do until we transition over to the new campus. But we're coming to you as our church and saying, listen, this is where we are. Would you pray about investing and if God doesn't lead you to do that, do not give. Do not give. But if God moves on your heart, we're asking you to live generously. I hope what we've talked about today stirs in you like it stirs in me. This is way bigger in the church, one church can't reach a city by itself. God has invited us into the mission and what an honor to share in his activity in Vegas, the West and the world. [BLANK_AUDIO]