Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Acts 13, highlighting the launch of missions from the church in Antioch. He emphasizes that the early church, filled with the Holy Spirit, took the bold step to spread the gospel beyond their local community, demonstrating the importance of being willing to go where God leads. The sermon encourages believers to actively participate in missions, whether through prayer, support, or direct involvement, and to trust in God's power to reach all people, regardless of their background.
Welcome and Housekeeping
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. Thank you, choir, for that.
I had sent out, if you have a child who wants to be dismissed at Children's Church, that's available. I sent out to all the choir people and said, hey, these are some songs that we've done in the past. Fill out your favorite one for me of top three.
And of all the ones I got back, that was the number one song that they liked to sing. And so I had to do that one first, as we haven't had practice in a while. And so just continue to pray for that. Hey, if anyone wants to lead music in here,
good plug at this point, I don't have to be the one up here leading. No one else has volunteered.
And so always praying for that, to have someone to do that. Instead of me, I'm not the best at singing or preaching or much of other things. But I can get by with what we've got. And so it's always there for you. Acts chapter 13 is where we're going to be at. You'll make your way there.
Acts chapter 13, we're going to go back into the book of Acts for the next couple of months, Lord willing. And we'll finish through the end of the book of Acts. Acts by the end of the year is the plan. The Lord can always change that.
But that's where we're at right now. And so just to recap,
so we spent the first half of the year talking through Acts chapter 1 through 12. And to summarize all of that into one statement, I want you to remember back to Acts chapter 1 verse 8.
And Jesus tells his disciples that he leaves, and once I leave, you'll receive power unto the Holy Ghost. And you'll go into Jerusalem,
Judea, and Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth. And so chapters 1 through 12 is Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. The church stayed where they're at. They hunkered down. They ministered in Jerusalem. They ministered in Judea. They stayed there in Samaria, and they began reaching those people.
Chapter 13 is where the whole church takes a flip to the next page, and it goes to the uttermost parts of the world. And so from 13 on is where we get the uttermost.
This is where we come into the picture of the book of Acts. And so we'll begin by reading 13, 1 through 12.
If you have your place, you can stand. If not, still stand, and we'll read out of honor of God's word.
The words will be on the screen for you. And the Bible says,
Sent by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucus. And from there they sailed to Cyprus, arriving in Salomeus. And they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues. They had also John as their assistant.
When they had traveled the whole island as far as Patmos, they came across a sorcerer, a Jewish false teacher named Bar-Jesus. He was with the procouncil, Sergius Pilus, an intelligent man.
And they summoned Barnabas and Saul and wanted to hear the word of God from them. But Eleamus, the sorcerer, this is meaning of his name, is opposed to them that tried to turn the procouncil away from the faith.
Verse 9, But Saul, also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, stared straight at Emmaus and said, You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery.
You, son of the devil, an enemy of all that is right. Won't you stop perverting the straight paths of the Lord?
Now look at the Lord's hand is against you. And you are going to be blind, and you will not see the sun for a time. Immediately a mist of darkness fell on him, and he went around seeking someone to lead him by the hand. Verse 12, Then when he saw what had happened,
the procouncil believed, because he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord. Father, we love you.
We thank you for what you've done. We thank you for your word that gives us direction and guidance.
We're thankful we're able to stand and read out of freedom of your word. Preach your word and teach your word in Sunday school, God. We have the freedom to do that, and we never want to take that for granted, God.
Prayer and Worship
I thank you for what you've done. Be with the sermon this morning. Help us to worship you in word and deed. In your name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.
Wonderful story here that happened in the Bible where Paul and Barnabas were working through the land and going out, and the mission of the church was launched. As I've entitled this message, The Launch of Missions and what this looks like.
It's very fitting the Lord laid this out to be the week before our serve week next week to sort of get us aligned at where we need to be and what we need to be doing. But I came across a story. Was anyone in here around?
Vicki was here at this time. Vicki was here at this time. In 1859. 1859. You may have seen pictures of this. You may have heard about this.
There was a French astronaut named Charles Blondin. And he announced that he was going to walk across the Niagara Falls on a tightrope. Thousands gathered to see what was going to be this impossible feat. And he stepped on the rope. It was 160 feet above the raging waters below.
There was no safety net. And he walked from one side to the other. And the crowd at this time, they erupted. I mean, there was no social media. There was no Facebook Reels or TikTok. This was something that was no CGI that could be done.
He just got up and he began walking from one side to the other. When he got to the other side, he said, you know, crowd, I'm not done with where I'm at now. And he put a blindfold on and went the opposite way and came back.
As he got to the other side, I mean, the crowd went crazy.
And he looked at him and said, you know, I don't think I'm done yet. And he pulled a wheelbarrow out and put a wheelbarrow on the tightrope and walked across the tightrope with the wheelbarrow all the way across. The people were stunned.
And at this moment, Blondin turned and he looked at the crowd and he said, do you believe I can carry someone in the wheelbarrow as I go across this tightrope? And everyone went crazy.
Yeah, we believe it. We believe it. We believe we think you can do this. You're the man. You've done this. He said, okay, I need a volunteer.
And the eruption of crowds going crazy for him immediately went silent and not one person volunteered to get in the wheelbarrow. Now, eventually later, he did put someone in the wheelbarrow, but they believed he could do it. They didn't trust him enough to get in the wheelbarrow.
And oftentimes, this is what happens to the church. This moment comes in and it's sort of the deepness in each and every one of us where we believe in the power of the gospel and to salvation that redeemed our lives, that we have the power of salvation that the Lord has given us.
But yet, when God says, I want you to go and reach the nations, is the spirit still calling? Is the spirit still sending? And is the spirit still saving?
And then when the Lord says to us, I want you to go, are we actually going to go? Are we going to be like the ones that wouldn't get in the wheelbarrow and they hesitated? And oftentimes, when we look at this passage in Acts chapter 13,
this is the moment in the early church where the early church said, it's worth what I'm going to do to get in the wheelbarrow.
He may fall and bad things may happen and persecution may come, but I'm going to get in the wheelbarrow and I'm going to spark this mission organization, the local church going out, listening to the spirit,
launching into the deep and doing what God has wanted us to do and changing the world the way we see it today. You see, the rope is stretched out before us. The tightrope is there.
Are we willing to step out and say, I want to go? I am willing to go.
If they didn't, I fully believe if the church did not take this step in Acts chapter 13, we would not be here today.
Because they didn't go and they didn't tell the world about the gospel. The gospel didn't spread. I mean, they list towns here. They went from Cyprus to Salamanus to Pappas, all across this region. And they left Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria.
Expansion of the Church
And all of a sudden, the church began to expand. The church began to go and grow. And others heard that had not heard before.
And all of a sudden, we get to this place and we ask ourselves, are we deciding to just be the crowd that's sitting and watching, or are we going to trust God enough to say, God, I want to get in the wheelbarrow. I want to be the wheelbarrow.
I want to be the guy pushing the wheelbarrow. I don't care what I'm doing. I just want to be a part of what you're doing. I want to go where you lead.
And so the first verse we look into as we break this down is the birthplace of missions. This is a local church with a global vision. I love how it starts out. And it says, now in the church at Antioch.
You see, this wasn't a boardroom where they got together and they said, okay, guys, let's brainstorm a little bit. Let's have a fun TED talk.
Let's try to figure out what we're going to do in order to reach the world and take it to the uttermost. No, this was a local church, a small church in Antioch that got together and said, listen, guys, we have to go. We've got to do something.
This was a diverse church. If you read the history of Antioch, this was a melting pot, you could say. They were ethnically and socially and spiritually different.
They weren't that educated. There weren't a lot of professors that were teaching in colleges at Antioch, but what they were doing was they were seriously surrendered saints looking to go and tell people about Jesus. And they had started there in Antioch and they built this church and now they're like, hey,
maybe we can do something else. Maybe we can go further.
Maybe this mission of of reaching other people is is going to go out further than what we can ever imagine.
And of course, it did. It came all the way to the other side of the world and all nations are hearing of the gospel of Christ. You see, at Pleasant Grove, our mission is to simply preach the word, practice hospitality.
But then the last part of this, and I've preached on it multiple times, so I'm not going to spend a ton of time is to penetrate the darkness in our community. Now, our community is locally, but it's also globally.
And what are we going to do to penetrate the darkness by having Bible school, by having our serve week, by sending teams out?
We are trying to small little ways to spread the seed out, to spread the gospel out to those who need to hear of the gospel, that need to hear of the life-changing effort of what Christ has done
for them. Now, oftentimes, I'm not a gardener or a planter, but I do sow seed in my yard for grass and I've got some spots underneath my front trees that the grass just isn't growing.
And as the weather has begun to wear, I'm noticing there were massive little stones that have been buried in the ground that are causing the grass not to grow. Now, I'm putting those out in this fall.
Me and Bernie are going to get out there with a wheelbarrow. We're going to dig these stones up so we can have grass out there.
But in the process of throwing this seed, there were some grass that fell on good ground and some grass seed that fell on hard ground. My job is just to spread the seed.
And so as a church, our job is to go out and spread the seed and allow the Lord to grow what he has decided to grow.
And April 1st of 1976, a small spark happened in a little garage in Palo Alto,
California. In Palo Alto, California, most of you don't even know what that is. But it was the birthplace of Apple electronics, Apple computers. Most of us have an iPhone or some type of Mac in here.
A lot of what you see and what we're doing here is through a Mac. And so this is where it began, was in a small garage with two guys named Steve that jumped on this idea of let's change the world electronically.
Now, I mean, I had a friend of mine yesterday that created a song for me over AI that he put in some lyrics and within three minutes, a song was produced with voices and instruments in a matter of just seconds.
Like AI and computers have come so far. And it all started with this little small garage.
And it was a small spark that happened. And now we look here in Acts chapter 13 and we say small church in Antioch that sparked the greatest movement this world has ever seen. A mission organization that was greater than we even have today.
And I believe that we can never underestimate what God can do.
As Wesley said, never underestimate what a group of people can do that are fully sold out to God. When God begins to work and God begins to come in and a people that are just said, God, I surrender. I want to do what you want me to do. I don't care the persecution.
I don't care what's going to happen. I just want the gospel to go forth. I want my neighbor to hear the gospel. I want my church people to hear the gospel. I want my people at my school to hear the gospel.
I want my best friend that has moved away and now lives on the other side of the world. I want them to hear the gospel. This is what the church at Antioch was about. Just hearing and seeing people know the gospel.
The question I want to ask us is, are we the kind of church like Antioch that God looks down and he says, you know, I want to use that church to launch a global mission.
To launch a global impact across all the world and see people come to know the Lord through our efforts and through what we are doing. There's a birthplace submission in verse one, but there's also the blessing of sending.
I've seen this many times in my life of being called and commissioned and covered in prayer and sending people out.
And it's a beautiful thing when the Holy Spirit calls someone and then that local church can get around them and lay hands and confirm them and say, you know what, I'm going to send them to the uttermost wherever
the Lord has for them. One of the beautiful things, and I think we miss this in our day and age is, is a couple of things that the Bible says. It says they worship together.
They got together and they just spent time and they said, let's just praise the Lord for what he's done. It says they continued on from this and they fasted.
Now fasting is something that, that we don't do often, but fasting is something that we should do more of. I try at least once a week to fast at least a meal a week where I just devote that meal to the Lord. Sometimes I do a full day.
One time in my life, I did a seven day fast. It was the hardest seven days of my entire life.
That's the longest I've ever done. I have a challenge to go longer in my own personal life.
But, but I believe that when God is leading us to do something and when God is telling us to do something and directing our life, we have to get to the point where we say, God, I'm willing to give up some things in order for your mission to go forward.
I'm willing to give up what God is, what, what I'm doing in my life in order for God to do some things. And when this happens, it says that after they fasted, they listened to the Holy Spirit.
When we are able to get away from our desires and allow the Holy Spirit to talk to us. And then we listen, God can do some amazing things. Then it said that they brought these two men,
Paul and Barnabas before them, and they laid hands on them and they sent them out.
This sending of missionaries was not a sad goodbye, but it was a commissioning of saying, I am going to, to send this out, to do something that I can't do, to go places that I will never be able
Willingness to Send
to go. And I'm going to allow them to, to reach people that I would never even see. And we've got to ask ourselves, are we able and willing to send people for the gospel, to send people into this wonderful place where God can use them?
I want you to imagine for a moment, NASA and rockets. Maybe you were around, I wasn't around when, when NASA sent the space shuttle to the moon for the very first time. Apollo 13 went off and, and they, they got there.
And if you believe that we landed on the moon, we're not going to have a conspiracy theory time, but, but we landed on the moon and, and this rocket went off.
And, and I've read story after story and Adrian Rogers, I'll give you a, I'm reading his book of his very first pastorate in Moon Bay, Florida, where this, where this rocket went off.
And he said it was just booming with people and, and people were coming to visit him and, and visit the church. And, but what happened is this, there was preparation, there was coordination. And then the launch eventually happened. The rocket doesn't just drift into space.
It remains tethered to this place called mission control. And mission control is monitoring things. And they're, they're saying, Hey, something's not right in this engine or something's not right here. You need to go check this. They are monitoring everything going that's going on. You see, this is the church in missions. The church is headquarters. The church is mission control.
We're sending the ones out and we're checking on them that are being sent out. We have our missionary that I send their letter every week, every month to the, the WMU.
And, uh, that, that is our IMB missionaries to South Africa and they are, they're working in their ministry, but we're the ones sending them.
And we are the one that, that reaps those benefits.
And we are the ones that are allowing the great things to happen when we send other people out.
Uh, and so the, the question I want to ask is this, when's the last time that you were so burdened about something in your life that you fasted and you prayed and you said, God, give me direction because I can't go to anyone else.
That's going to give me direction. You're the one that has the direction of life. You're the one that's going to lead and guide me in my area of life. I need you to give me direction.
And then the bulk of this message is in chapter verses four through 12. And we'll spend the remaining of our time here. They were, uh, the first missionary journey begins. The first missionary journey begins.
We, we get this place where, I mean, they spend three verses where the church happens, the birthplace of missions, that they begin to sin.
Prayer and Fasting
They begin to pray. They begin to, to fast. They begin to pray about what God has for them. And now they send people to shine in dark places. It's almost like our mission statement.
If I penetrate the darkness of the world, they're sending these men to go be the light in a dark and depraved world. When is the last time we were a light in a dark world?
When's the last time someone came to you and said, what's so different about your life? What, why are you, why are you acting this way?
Maybe in a good way, hopefully not in a bad way, but why are you, why did you pray over your meal? Why did you care that this thing happened to me? Why did you even show compassion toward me? Other people, they just, they blew me off. They didn't care about me.
And you showed compassion. That is us shining in the dark world.
Verse four, it says, so being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Saluda. And he mentions a couple of different places here. Verse four, I wrote it down like this. They were sent by the Spirit. They were sent by the Spirit. You see, this wasn't a personal ambition.
This wasn't the, the Lord, this wasn't just Saul getting up and saying, you know, I know some guys over here in Cyprus and down here in Antioch and other different places. I want to go there.
No, this was a divine assignment from the Lord where the Spirit came and said, I need these men and I need them to go here. I need them to follow me in this area.
I was telling Mim this morning that she told me, she said, hey, Jackson's going to be here today.
And I said, that's awesome. I said, I actually, as I was preparing my message, Jackson came to my mind. I've got it wrote down in my notes. If you want to see, you can. I don't plan all of my illustrations, but there's a couple that I do.
And Jackson came to my mind because I was thinking about when we get an assignment, you know, when we joined the military, when Jackson joined the military, he didn't necessarily choose where he wanted to go.
He maybe gave some suggestions of some places, but the final say was the commander above him said, this is your assignment and this is where you're going to serve. And this is how we are as Christians.
Paul and Barnabas, they understood that their assignment came from God. They understood that the assignment of where they were going to go and where they were going to preach and what they were going to do ultimately came from the spirit and the spirit was leading in that area.
The question we have to ask ourselves is, are you willing to go where the spirit sins? Are you willing to go even if it's uncomfortable?
Over these last couple of weeks, I haven't been able to attend every Wednesday Bible study. I've came to the ones that I was able to, but this last Wednesday,
one of the men there or women, I don't remember who it was. They said that when we were going through the study, faith is ultimately going to be uncomfortable. When we follow the Lord in faith, it is stepping out of our comfort zone.
It is stepping out of what we think is comfortable and what we know is comfortable because it is saying, God, I'm willing to be uncomfortable for you. I'm willing to do things and stretch myself a little bit more than what I'm comfortable doing.
And by doing that and by allowing the spirit to send us and do the things that God has us to do, we are able to see God work in mighty, mighty ways.
Facing Opposition
Number two here, opposition arises. When we're sent, verses six through eight,
and we do the work of the Lord, it's not always going to be a bed of roses and wonderful and flowers and riding around and seeing sunshine, everywhere. Whenever light shines, darkness is going to be present and darkness resists it.
Where we come across this man named Elimeus or Bargesus and says he opposed them and tried to distort the gospel,
tried to distort what was going on in their mission. He tried to come in and come against you. And oftentimes we can think and we can remember of those that are opposed to what we're doing, that are going to come in and resist us. Because my childhood bully was my next door neighbor.
His name was David Melton. Now me and David, we get along well today. He's got, he coached football. We played football together.
But the reason why he was my mortal enemy is because David was born one day before me. I was born December 8th. He was born December 7th. I was born at like 6 a.m. He was born at like 11 p.m.
So it was like five or six hours between us. Me and my mom, my mom and his mom were pregnant the whole time and had a lot of different things going on. But they were back and forth.
And all of a sudden we were born and as we began to grow and we began to play together and hang out, this is what David would say. He'd say, I can't hang out with you because I hang out with older people. And you're too young for me.
I'm like, dude, I'm five hours younger than you. What are you talking about? But all of a sudden there was this resentment.
There was this strife. There was animosity between us. And we'd play football. I played defense. He played offense.
And so we'd line up and we'd just go at each other. Like this was our entire life. There was opposition. There was things that made us better because we were opposed.
And one thing that I often remember, I heard this from someone years ago, is the hecklers don't show up during the rehearsal. They just show up when the events are happening.
And in our life, we must get to the point where we are so devoted to the Lord in our private time that when the real show shows up and we're really doing what God wants us to do, it doesn't matter the resistance because we are so determined. We've fasted.
We've prayed. This is what God has told us to do. We're serving him. And when opposition comes,
just like opposition came against Paul and Barnabas, they were ready to stand up for the Lord. They were ready to say, I don't care what comes my way. I am here on a purpose.
I'm here, as the Blues Brothers said, I'm here on a mission from God and I'm going to serve the eternal God in his way and in what he has determined for me. So the question I want to ask you is what form does spiritual resistance take in your life?
We all have our own, what we call demons in our life or withholds or pitfalls or hindrances in our life.
Can we identify what those are and how do you respond when that resistance comes? Do we fold under the pressure? Do we give up and say, well, life is over. I've done what I can do. I tried my best, Lord. I tried to go to Antioch.
Boldness in Mission
I tried to go to Patmos and when I got there, there were these guys that came against me. Lord, I tried. I went.
No, what did Paul do? And we're going to see he began to overcome with God's power. The Holy Spirit filled Paul with confidence that I don't think we've seen yet in scripture, but he confronts this evil with boldness. I mean, this event that happened,
the Bible says that Paul filled with the Holy Spirit stared straight in his eyes, another translation says. And he says, you are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. You are the son of the devil and the enemy of all that is right. He goes at him.
He says, you're a deceiver. You are trying to abolish the truth.
And he just looks at him and says, hey, I'm not going to have it. Sometimes this is what opposition requires for us to stand up and say, no, I'm going to do this because the Lord has called me to do this.
Elisha, when he was praying for his servant's eyes in 2 Kings chapter 6, he prayed in a way that was bold and declarative for the Lord to work. God sometimes has to blind people's eyes in order for others to see him clearly.
And that's where we can begin to get here. But I want us to think about this.
How often is it that when we stand up against opposition, when we go up against those that are coming against us is all of a sudden our mission begins to get bigger. Other people begin to come at us, right? You stand up to the school bully,
the guy that is the meanest guy in school. You stand up.
And all of a sudden, once you stand up to him, everyone else has come behind you and said, hey, what can I do for you? Right? You're the new big guy on town.
And that's what Paul did. He found the biggest, baddest person in town.
He said, I'm going after him. That's the guy I'm going after. That's the guy that I'm going to win to the Lord. No matter what happens, I'm going to go and I'm going to tell them about Jesus. And oftentimes in our life, the boldness comes and we get confronted.
And I know I'm guilty of this. We sort of step back because we don't want to make someone upset. We don't want to hurt someone's feelings. And Paul in this way, he necessarily wasn't hurting his feelings. He was just simply telling him the truth of the gospel.
Have you ever asked God to fill you with this type of boldness, this type of courage, this type of clarity to say, God, I'm going to go up against things. I'm going to preach the gospel.
I'm going to tell others about you. And I know opposition is going to come. Help me be bold. Help me not to back down. Help me not to backslide.
But help me to go forward with your mission and to tell others about you. And then we get this wonderful picture of what happens when boldness happens.
You see, in this story, one person came to know Jesus. And we get the first convert of this missionary journey. It's a pro-council, a Roman official who believes and trusts in the Lord. You see, the gospel reaches every single race, every single elite, every single poverty.
No matter what stage of life you're in, the gospel is for you.
The gospel is here to reach those that we believe oftentimes are less than us or even more than us.
And this is the launch of this mission. It wasn't just about going to the poorest tribal people, but it was about going to all people groups and telling everyone of the nation that was here, including the government officials, that this is what we have to do.
You must repent and you must believe. Oftentimes, and I'm not going to hear talk about politics, but oftentimes, we must even go to our officials. I pray for our officials all the time. I send emails to our senators. I send emails to our president.
Every single president that we've had since I've been in ministry, I've written them a handwritten letter. And I mail it to our president. I say, I'm praying for you. If you want me to come and pray for you, invite me to the White House. I'd love to be there.
I've never been inside the White House. Are we praying in this way for every people, for the people in our town, for the people in our school, for the people that we work with, for the people in our government, for our school board officials, and schools coming back, for our principals?
Are we praying for these people? And are we allowing the Lord to work in our lives?
Several weeks ago, I asked you, and I want you to bring this back to your mind, of the five people or three people that you were burdened at that time for the Lord to reach in your life. How has that been?
Have you been praying for them? Have you been continuing to say, God, give me opportunities to invite them to the church? Give me opportunities to share the gospel with them. And are we truly believing that God is powerful enough to reach them?
Are we truly believing that God's grace is sufficient for all humanity?
And God's grace is there for all that would trust in Him. And if our trust and our belief is that, then we should continue to be praying for these ones that are on our hearts, the ones that are on our mind, that we can reach out to, that we can
Personal Responsibility in Outreach
reach out and say, God, work in my life. Allow me, as we said this morning in Sunday school, to produce fruit that they're going to see and say, what's different about them? What's different about what they're doing? And I want to have what they have.
As Terry comes and begins to close this message down, I want to ask you a simple question. I've asked you a lot of questions this morning, but I want to ask you one more question. Will you be a launcher into missions or will you be a lagger that's sort of left behind?
The missions begin in the local church. This local church, just like our church, they worshiped, they fasted, they listened, they sent, they watched God move. And they begin to support missions in a way that, as I said earlier, revolutionized the church. You know, they had some that participated and some that went.
But we only read in this account of three people that went in this missionary journey. Paul and Barnabas and one of their assistants named John. Now we believe this is John who wrote Revelation.
I didn't even have time to talk about this, but he went by Patmos, where he was going to spend the rest of his days. He went by there and he saw this place where he was going to be at. You see, some gave.
Some gave in order for these people to go on mission. But I believe all of this church began to pray.
Every single member of the church in Antioch began to pray for the Lord to work in this mission effort. They began to say, God, what are you going to do? How can I help Paul? How can I help Barnabas? How can I help John? What can I do?
How can I be a part of this, even though I'm not there? I want us to go back to this thought of a rocket ship. When we think of NASA launching a rocket ship, we often picture the moment the rocket lifts off. Flames begin to roar. Smoke is billowing.
The majestic rise into the sky. Oh, it's thrilling. It's one of my beautiful things to watch is when one of these rocks. I actually had a dream just the other day of coming across around a corner and seeing a rocket ship like right there take off. It was wonderful.
Before that rocket ever leaves the ground, there are engineers who spent years designing it. There are technicians who check every bolt, every circuit, every panel that's there. There are people who clean the launch pad. They analyze weather patterns. They run simulations. They file reports. They check the fuel systems.
The astronauts are the visible few. The astronauts are the ones that walk down that platform. They turn and the cameras are looking at them and they're smiling. They raise their helmet. They look and they wave. That's the ones that we all look at.
And they are just a representation of the labor, the sacrifice, and the support of this community who, without any unseen army behind the scenes, they begin to go and get this rocket off the ground. In the same way, God sends missionaries. God sends us across the globe, across the street.
It's not a solo act. It takes a church, a body of believers that are behind you, that are praying, that are saying, I want you to go. I want you to do this. It takes people who are giving generously. It takes people who are praying faithfully. It takes us who are training and discipling,
Encouragement to Serve
young and old, to say, I want to encourage you to go and show hospitality. I want to encourage you to go and be sent from our church and go and reach others.
Now, I'm not up here saying that every single one of us are going to be called into missions, but there's someone that's going to be called to step into the rocket and say, I want to go and be a missionary somewhere.
Pleasant Grove, what kind of church do we want to be? Do we want to be just a museum of memories? Or do we want to be a launch pad for missions?
Are we going to be a spectator church, applauding others as they go? And that's a great thing to do. Or are we going to be a sending church that's going to be fasting and praying and trusting the Holy Spirit to say, God, I don't know who it's going to be.
I don't know if it's going to be a young person,
a college age person, maybe someone in their 50s or 60s that said, I just want to go and I want to serve a couple of days, a couple of months, a couple of years. What is it going to be and how are we going to let the Spirit lead in that way?
You see, you may not preach to Cyprus. You may not preach in front of a sorcerer. But you can fuel the mission right here as we think forward at our local service mission project. How can we serve with a small basketball or volleyball tournament?
How can we serve or camp, not tournament? How can we serve others as we're just simply going across the street and painting a sidewalk or doing things for a school? In the name of Jesus, how can we do this?
We are all part of a launch team. What is our position in that team? Where is God calling you to be in this launch of missions?
Maybe you're here today and you say, Pastor James, I don't even know Jesus. I'm like this guy who was part of the sorcerer who's been faking it and trying to lead people astray.
And maybe today's the day where you come and you say, I want to be told like Paul, this is the way of salvation.
Or maybe you're here today and you say, I want to do more for missions than I ever have. Whatever it may be, you respond as we close our message. Let's pray.
Lord, we love you. We thank you for what you've done. God, we thank you for this example of missions. Lord, oftentimes we struggle. I know for me, I want to be on mission all the time.
Everywhere I go in the schools and as I'm going across the street,
that oftentimes we just see missions as packing up and going across the world for a small mission trip. But it's every single day of our life.
Help us to realign this thought of missions and help us to reach those that are closest to us. Our Jerusalem, our Judea, our Samaria, and then help us to go to the uttermost.
Maybe by sending a dollar or five or whatever it may be to help a missionary. God, help us to be the ones that are sending others.
Lord, we love you. We thank you for what you've done. Help us to respond as you see fit. In your name we pray. Amen.
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