A missionary conference should have clear principles that
you carry away.
You're going to forget a great deal of
what's been said, much of what you've seen,
but there should be certain principles that are
going to stay with you as long as
you live.
And I assume that you've heard them.
If you haven't put them together, as I
will in the next few moments, then this
is going to help summarize them for you.
The first principle is this.
The Bible is a missionary book.
There are many who, name the name of
Christ, who think the Bible has something to
say about missions.
That's totally incorrect.
The Bible is a missionary book.
Oh, it talks about agriculture, but it's not
a book on agriculture.
It talks about money, but it's not a
book on economics.
It's a missionary book.
It unfolds the eternal purpose in the heart
of God to bring to himself a people
that should be the objects of his love,
a people for his praise, that should show
forth his glory and grace.
A people to whom he could reveal himself
and share all that he is.
It begins when the world was made, and
it continues until there's a new heaven and
there's a new earth.
And in between, it's that unfolding of the
eternal missionary purpose in the heart and plan
and mind of God.
Now, if you read the Bible that way,
then you're going to expect to see something
relating to this task that's ours now at
the end of the age on almost every
chapter and every page.
The second principle is close to the first.
It's this.
The Church, rightly understood, is a missionary society.
Now, many churches have missionary societies, and I
have no objection to that as long as
the Church is a missionary society.
But if it thinks it can have one
in place of being one, it's out of
order.
The Church is the missionary society.
Now, we have a great many missionary agencies
that have called themselves missionary societies.
If they think that they were raised up
of God to send the missionaries, then they
have misunderstood their role and function.
Fact of the matter is, missions as we
know it began back there in Antioch when
this Holy Spirit said to the brethren in
the Church there, separate unto me Saul and
Barnabas and send them.
And thus, the Church was constituted the sending
agency.
Well, what about these other agencies we call
mission societies?
Do they have a place?
Of course they do.
It would be very difficult for the pastor
of church to have to arrange for all
the visas, all of the problems that are
associated with their people going into various countries,
and so missionary service agencies that aid the
local church.
But it's the local church that's the sending
entity and responsible before God to get the
message out to the ends of the earth,
not some society.
The third principle ties closely to the other
two.
It's this.
Everyone born into the family of God, who
has been washed therefore by the blood of
Christ, who has truly repented of his sins,
and in that new heart has purpose to
please God in everything, I say every child
of God, is involved in this missionary task.
There is no room for spectators.
The only one in a church that would
be a spectator to the mission, to missions,
is the one that has never been born
again, but somehow has come in under false
pretense and colors into the membership of the
church, but still dead in their sins.
You see, dear friend, it is correct to
say, as Oswald Smith said, of all around
this country and Canada, if you are not
a missionary, then you are a mission field.
And I believe that we need to reemphasize
that.
If you've been born of God, you are
already by virtue of the call that he
gave you.
Oh, I know we hear a lot about
people being called to missions, and I realize
I've used the term, and I realize that
it's not done with presumption.
And what we really should say as we
believe the Lord is lead us to a
mission, to a field.
He's leading, he's directing, rather than calling.
I'd like to reserve that word, call, to
the one that the Scripture teaches.
We have had a call, but it's from
the Lord Jesus Christ.
Come, follow me.
It's a call to a person.
Someone's asked me after we had not returned
to Africa, but had remained home to do
deputation work at the request of our society
and the leading of the Lord.
Said, I thought you were called to Africa.
And I had to reply, no, you were,
you thought incorrectly.
I was called to follow Jesus Christ, and
I'm going to spend my life following him,
doing what I believe he wants me to
do, where and when and as he wishes
and as he directs.
He led us to Africa, and now he's
led us home.
And we're responsible for this phase of his
work.
After all, the world is the field, and
from the point of vision he has when
he sees it, he sees it all at
once, and it's very hard to distinguish home
and foreign when you're looking at it from
the throne in heaven.
Now, every one of us are involved.
You are involved in this task.
And if you'll accept that responsibility and realize
that this conference, when it's over, has really
just begun, because you are going to be
engaged in your missionary responsibility.
Oh, some will go back to fields overseas,
but your field is the home where you
live, the community where you live, the school
that you attend, the place where you work
and earn your living.
All of this is your mission field, the
city where you live, the county, the state,
the country.
It's all part of your place of witness,
your mission field.
Now, you have to have Scripture to reinforce
this.
And therefore, I submit to you that in
Romans, the fourth chapter, we have a very
clear statement by the Apostle Paul that I
don't think I'm having to twist at all
when I apply it to you and say
that it reinforces this matter.
Paul is talking about Abraham, and he's talking
about the promise that God made to Abraham.
And he is talking about the fact the
seed of Abraham is not only those that
are the physical descendants of Abraham, but also
the ones that are his spiritual descendants.
That Abraham by faith became the child of
God and the father of the faithful.
And he said all of you that by
faith have received Jesus Christ and have passed
from death to life, you're the children of
Abraham as well as those that are the
physical descendants.
And the promise that God made to Abraham
was not only to his physical seed, argues
Paul, but also to his spiritual seed.
Well, what is that promise?
It's this, in thee and in thy seed
shall all nations of the earth be blessed.
God promised to Abraham that he would have
a worldwide blessing, and God promised Abraham a
seed who would also bless the world.
And if you've been born of God, you're
that seed.
And you have from God the promise that
if you will walk in the way he
has commanded you to walk and made it
possible for you to walk, that you too
can have a worldwide blessing and ministry for
him.
Now it's absolutely consistent with what we have
in that word that the Lord Jesus gave
as he was leaving his disciples.
You remember what he said?
After that the Holy Ghost has come upon
you, you shall receive power, and you shall
be witnesses unto me, either in Jerusalem or
in Judea or in Samaria or under the
uttermost part of the earth.
Is that what he said?
No.
Not even the new versions will go that
far.
The only place you get that is from
the reverse vision.
No revised version would ever do it.
He did not say either or.
He said you shall be witnesses unto me
both in Jerusalem and in Judea and in
Samaria and under the uttermost part of the
world.
It's a both-and situation, not an either
-or situation.
And everyone who names the name of Christ,
filled with the Spirit of God, has a
worldwide ministry for Christ.
You say, well, that's some new doctrine, is
it?
No, it's no new doctrine.
It's just that which has been taught.
I heard that, Marjorie and I heard that
from Robert C.
McQuilkin, president of Columbia Bible College, who came
up to Monterey, Massachusetts, the New England Keswick,
when we were candidates there, and spent two
hours telling us about Abraham and the promise
made by God to Abraham and the promise
to Abraham's seed.
And something took hold of my heart and
came a flame of fire in my heart
that somehow God in His grace was going
to give to me an opportunity for a
worldwide ministry for Christ.
But I had the privilege of going to
Bible school and training seven years after high
school to get ready to go.
There were others that didn't.
I think of that woman I heard about
years ago.
Now, don't ask me to give you the
documentation on this because it's somewhere, but I
couldn't put my finger on it.
But I read it, and it burned its
way into my memory, and I'm giving it
to you substantially as I read it or
as it was given to me.
In Edinburgh, Scotland, there was a dear woman,
a maiden lady, staying home to take care
of her aging parents who had a heart
for God long before women went to the
mission field.
And God had began to burden her to
pray, and she asked God if He would
send her.
He said no, He wouldn't send her, but
He would send some of hers.
She never married.
She didn't know what it meant, hers.
One Saturday she was doing the family shopping.
They didn't have refrigerators in those days.
You bought on Saturday what you'd cook and
use on the Lord's Day.
And so it was.
They shopped every day.
And she had her little woven basket and
was walking down the street toward the store
to get the provisions she needed.
And out of a narrow alley, a young
man, a young boy, about eight or nine,
burst, bumped into her.
She didn't lose her balance, but he did
his, and he fell down on the cobbles
and lay there sobbing.
And she reached down and set him up
and took her handkerchief and wiped his runny
nose and weepy eyes and cleaned his face,
got him quiet, and she asked his name.
Her name is Bobby, man.
Well, why are you running, Bobby?
I said, well, my father's drunk again, and
he's been beating me, and I broke away
from him, and I'm running because I don't
want to be beat anymore by him.
Every time my father gets a drink, he
beats me, and my mother, too.
And she talked a little while, and they
walked down the street, and she said, Bobby,
as she passed the church, have you ever
been in the church?
I said, oh, no, ma'am, I couldn't
go there.
These are all the clothes I've got, these
rags I'm wearing.
They wouldn't let anybody like me in there.
I hold the horses sometimes for the folks
that do go in, and I've heard the
music when the windows were open in the
summer, but I never could go in.
Would you like to?
Oh, ma'am, I'd like to so much.
She said, Bobby, next Saturday you meet me
right here.
I can't do it today, but next Saturday
you meet me, and I will buy you
clothes, and you can go with me to
that church.
So the next Saturday he was there, and
she bought him everything from shoes, stockings, underwears,
little shirt, pants, everything he needed to go
neatly into the church.
And for several Sundays he met her there,
dressed up, and went with her.
And then one Sunday he wasn't there.
And she looked for him.
She looked for him for a week and
didn't see him, and then she saw him
and said, Bobby, what happened?
Oh, I'm so ashamed, ma'am.
My father saw my package.
I've been hiding it under the bed behind
a pillow.
And he found the pillow, and he saw
the package, and he took my clothes, and
he pawned them for a drink, and I
don't have anything to go to church in.
She said, Bobby, meet me here.
I'll buy you clothes, but we'll keep them
at my house, and you can come there
bathed and dressed, and you can go to
church with me.
Well, after a few months he said, You
know, I've listened to the Word, and I've
asked Jesus to become my Lord and come
into my heart.
And then she continued to teach him, get
him ready for school because he'd had no
education to read, to write, prepared him for
entrance, and he was accepted.
And she paid his way.
And he went to seminary, and he went
to the mission field.
Years have gone by.
She's gone home to be with the Lord.
It's in China, late at night.
A couple of candles and saucers, a bare
pine table, and a man, face prematurely lying,
is kneeling on the floor with a packet
of paper under his hands that he's dedicated
to the Lord.
It's the New Testament in the Chinese language,
translated by Robert
Morrison, first missionary to China,
who was the Wee Bobby of Edinburgh, and
a maiden lady who could never leave Edinburgh,
was responsible for getting the Word of God
into China.
What did he say?
In thee and in thy seed shall all
nations of the earth be blessed.
But how's he going to do it?
Did he have a plan commensurate with such
an enormous responsibility and privilege and task?
You would expect our God to have such
a plan, would you not?
One that was logical, reasonable.
There are those people who, in their short
-sightedness, think that what the angel sang that
night, that first Christmas night, over the plain
of Bethlehem was, Thou shalt call his name
Jesus, for he shall save his people from
hell and take them to heaven when they
die.
That, too, is the reverse vision.
That's not what the angel said.
He said, Thou shalt call his name Jesus,
for he shall save his people from their
sin.
God's purpose in salvation is not just to
keep us out of hell, but to save
us from the penalty of what we have
done, to save us from the tyranny of
our own traits and dispositions, attitudes and habits,
to save us from the power of temptation
and provide a way of escape, and also
to take these blood-ransomed bodies and personalities
as living sacrifices to be given to the
Lord Jesus, just as Mother Mary gave her
body to the Holy Ghost that he might
be incarnate and come into time and invade
time, that the one who would inscribe the
decalogue on the tables of stone, the lawgiver,
could by incarnation become a lawkeeper so that
he could die for lawbreakers like me,
like you.
And he asks us to present our bodies
a living sacrifice, that he might live in
us and live through us his own life.
If you look above you, you will see
light bulbs twisted into sockets, and because those
light bulbs are in the socket and are
making connection with the energy that's flowing from
a generator somewhere, those light bulbs have become
incandescent and are dispelling the darkness that would
be around you if they were not working.
And so his purpose in grace is that
somehow he might bring us into such a
relationship with him that we could become incandescent
with his presence.
In John chapter 17, in verse 21, he
speaks of his disciples who were with him
and prayed,
I do believe.
And he says to his father, Neither pray
I for these alone, but for them also
which shall believe on me through their word,
that they all may be one, as thou,
Father, art in me, and I in thee,
they may be one in us, that the
world may know that thou hast sent me,
and that the world may be able to
believe.
Now, most of the world today does not
know that the Father sent the Son.
And many of those who know that fact
are not able to believe because they've seen
no demonstration of the reality of his presence.
But in his prayer to his father, he
said, Father, that they all may be in
union, the same way that I lived in
you, and you lived in me, I may
live in them, and they will live in
me, and the world will know, and the
world will be able to believe.
The world doesn't know.
And it isn't able to believe.
And why?
I think it's because we've tried everything else
but God's way.
I don't want us to stop doing anything
we're doing.
I just want us to add to it
the way the Lord Jesus saw that the
task would be accomplished.
My friend, if you've got insight enough and
wisdom enough from God to know that you
can't save yourself by your own efforts, it's
not asking too much to expect you to
realize that if you couldn't save yourself by
your own efforts, you can't serve him acceptably
by your own efforts either.
Why, everything I do and everything you do
in the energy of our own personalities is
going to be burned up in the judgment,
and in that day will be nothing but
wood, hay, and stubble.
The only thing that's going to endure that
test, that fire, will be that which he
did through us.
And what he is asking now is that
you will recognize that if you couldn't save
yourself, the only logical course for you is
to present your body to him a living
sacrifice.
Your purpose is to please him if you're
a child of God, in everything.
He's Lord of everything.
But how is it going to be affected?
How is it going to be fulfilled?
When you come to that place that you
realize, I can't, Lord.
I've tried.
I can't.
Oh my, what a wonderful thing to come
to the realization that you can't.
That's the first time that he can say,
Well, I've been waiting for you to come
to that place.
Now if you'll give me a chance, you'll
find out that whereas you can't, I can.
And what you can't do for him, you'll
find he can do through you.
And there's all the difference in the world.
You all have nothing but frustration and defeat
and heartache and sadness if you try it
in the energy of all what you are.
But he says present your body a living
sacrifice.
Present your brain.
And so the Lord Jesus living in you
can use your brain to think his thoughts
and get them back in the world.
Present your heart so that living in you,
he can have a heart that's moved with
compassion.
Present your eyes so that living in you,
he can use your eyes to see the
lost.
Present your ears so that he and you
can listen to the cry of those caught
in the toils of sin.
Present your feet so that living in you,
he can use your feet to go where
he wants to go.
Present your hands so that living in you,
he can use your hands to lift the
fallen and feed the hungry and guide the
blind to light.
Present your lips so that living in you,
he can speak through your lips, your mind
his word of redeeming love to those to
whom he sends you to bring that message.
What did Paul say?
I am crucified with Christ.
It took three years at the University of
Hard Knocks for him to unlearn.
He had to get a graduate course in
unlearning.
Three years and all he's doing is making
better intents.
Everything is just credit cards have lapsed.
All his memberships have lapsed.
Everything is gone.
He's sitting out there with a callus on
his thumb pushing a needle through that goat's
hair canvas.
And the Lord says, well, are you ready,
son?
Ready, Lord?
I've forgotten everything.
I've forgotten how to talk.
I've forgotten how to write.
I've forgotten everything.
Why, the things that used to count gain
to me I cost refuge, just fertilizer, nothing.
I have nothing, Lord.
And you know what the Lord said?
Oh, that's fine.
That's fine.
You have nothing?
No, I haven't anything.
I can't do anything, Lord.
I can't come with the excellency of men's
speech.
I used to be quite a debater, but
I can't do that anymore.
All I know is Jesus Christ and him
crucified.
Now listen.
I, said the apostle, am crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless, I live.
Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.
And the life I now live in the
flesh, I live by the faith of the
Son of God who loved me and gave
himself for me.
He didn't say by faith in the Son
of God.
The faith of the Son of God.
What was that?
That someday you'd run down.
Someday you'd quit.
And someday you'd say, Lord, I can't.
And then you'd hear him say, I know
you can't.
I know you can't.
But I can.
Now, if you really mean that you can't,
just present yourself to me.
Invite me to fill you with myself.
Let me move in, take over, and control.
There's a lot of folks who've been filled
with the Spirit that have never gotten around
yet to letting the Lord Jesus Christ live
his life through them.
Oh, they're filled with the Spirit.
I don't have any question about that.
But they've never recognized that the Lord Jesus
wants to do the work through them.
And that's what we're talking about.
He said, Father, what did he say of
his ministry?
I do nothing of myself.
The works that I do, the Father that
dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.
I don't speak of myself.
I speak as I receive commandment of the
Father.
If he hadn't done that, he never could
have said that night of the resurrection in
the upper room.
You remember what he did.
He came into the upper room.
He said to his disciples, Peace be unto
you.
And then what did he say?
As the Father sent me, so send I
you.
That word send, the Latin form of the
word send is mito, from which we get
missionary.
Literally what he said was, As the Father
missionaried me, so I missionary you.
But how?
Think about it for a moment.
The Lord Jesus was conceived by the Holy
Ghost.
From the moment of that conception, he was
indwelled by the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
For thirty-three years, he lived as a
root out of a dry ground, increasing in
wisdom, stature, favor with God and man.
He went down to Jordan's banks, and he
was baptized.
Now to us, baptism is a picture of
death to sin, and alive to God.
But our Lord Jesus had no sin.
To what could baptism apply?
To what could it be symbolic?
He was God come in the flesh, and
he had a perfect right to do everything
that was to be done in his own
essential deity as Son.
But there on Jordan's banks and in that
water, the Lord Jesus said, I lay aside
the right to act in my essential deity
as Son, and I accept the limitation of
my humanity that in all things I may
be like unto my brethren.
And the Spirit of God who was in
him at that moment came upon him, clothing
him, and everything done by Christ from that
moment on was done by the power of
the Father through the Holy Spirit, and not
by the Son in his own essential deity.
Why?
So that he could say that night and
this morning, As the Father sent me, so
send I you.
What's the parallel?
You were born of the Spirit.
The Spirit of God awakened you and convicted
you and brought you to repentance.
And when you savingly received him, he came
in to quicken your heart.
And then you presented, you asked him to
come and he clothed you with the Holy
Spirit.
You were baptized in the Holy Spirit.
But, have you learned to let the Lord
Jesus Christ live his life through you the
way Paul did when he said, I'm crucified.
He could have said, I'm crucified with Christ,
I'm buried with him, quickened with him, raised
with him, seated with him in Christ.
We've tried everything else.
Don't you think it's time we did this
his way?
Oh, if this morning the company of people
within these walls, about twelve times or ten
times at least, more than there were in
the upper room on the day of Pentecost,
the task the Lord gave us could be
completed if every one of us here would
simply allow the Lord Jesus from this day
on to live in us his own life
and through us.
My, the things that would happen, the ministries
that would be taking place, the work that
would be done.
And that's your privilege.
You are an heir to the promise in
thee and in thy seed shall all nations
of the earth be blessed.
It's to you that he says present your
body a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God,
which is your reasonable service.
You're a missionary, both in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria,
and under the uttermost part of the earth.
You, you're right there in the center of
it all.
But what are you going to do about
it?
Will you leave, forget the sound of the
voice that was in your ears for a
few minutes?
Or will you do something about it?
This missionary conference ought to totally change your
life.
Not because I'm here, or the other speakers
are here, but because you have met with
God and you've heard God speak to your
heart and you've said, Lord, I want my
life to count for Christ.
We were on our way back from Africa.
Our ship, the Exicorda, had gone from Alexandria,
Egypt, to Piraeus, Greece.
And we were to be there taking on
some cargo for two or three days.
And so we arranged a trip to go
down through Athens.
And the place we ended up, the last
place we saw, was the Colosseum, where the
original Olympic Games had been held.
Our guide, the limousine driver that had gotten
this group from the ship taking them, our
guide had been a taxi driver in Chicago,
and he spoke inimitable English.
And we enjoyed it, him.
And he had some very interesting, why maybe
untrue, but interesting comments about Athens, too.
I don't know how much he knew about
history, but he was an exciting guy.
We were standing there in this refurbished Colosseum.
The Nazis had done it when they'd occupied
Greece.
They'd gone and got the marble and fitted
it out again.
And I said to the guide, where was
the bima?
Oh, he said, you speak Greek.
I said, no, I don't speak Greek.
He said, bima, that's Greek.
I know it's Greek.
Well, why do you say bima?
Because for many, many years I've been expecting
to stand before the bima.
He said, you can't.
It isn't here anymore.
When they remade this, they didn't put the
bima in there.
I said, what was it?
Well, he said it was a balcony where
the judges sat and where they would bring
the people that had won.
They'd come up on some steps and the
judges at the bima would give them a
crown of laurels.
Can you imagine these fellows going out and
getting killed or someone trying to kill them
and all they get when they finish was
laurel leaves?
And it faded away.
And I had a vision.
Now, I don't know whether I was awake,
whether I was asleep, whether I saw it
or whether I imagined it.
And I don't care.
It was more real than anything that was
around me.
I saw a vast temple on a high
hill.
And then in a moment I was in
a line of people going into great doors
at that temple.
And in another moment I was up to
the door and a servant, probably an angel,
reached over and brought a package and said,
here, take this.
And I picked the package up.
It wasn't large and it wasn't heavy.
I carried it with me through the doors
and there I saw the Lamb seated upon
the throne, more glorious than anything that had
ever been written or painted of Him.
And in that moment I knew what it
was.
I was to appear before Him.
And there in my hand was my life.
And my works were going to be tried,
whether good or bad, whether wood, hay, or
stubble, or gold, silver, or precious stone.
The line moved and I was next.
A servant said, give me the package and
I did.
There was a furnace there at the foot
of the, where the Lord was seated and
a flame that burned with nothing to fuel
it.
And my package was put in there and
the flame covered it.
A moment later, the servant picked up a
tool.
I didn't see the tool until later.
And I, after I heard it grating on
the furnace, and then I heard the voice
of the servant say, stretch out your hands.
And I reached out my hand to take
a crown.
And the voice said, cup your hands.
And the little shovel with a cover on
it was put over my cupped hands.
And the light contents from within slid out
into my palms.
And when I brought it around in front
of me and looked, all I had was
a handful of ashes.
Ashes.
Oh, I'd served.
I'd given my food to feed the poor,
my money to help the...
I'd given my body to be burned.
I'd been a missionary.
I'd had the wrong motives, the wrong attitude,
the wrong relationship, the wrong resources.
What I'd done, so much of what I'd
done, I'd done to be seen.
And I dropped my hands.
I looked at the Lord, and the look
in His eye made me weep.
I had nothing to give Him for my
life.
And I knew that I would have wept
perhaps for eternity.
I was there, but my life had been
wasted.
And I followed my filtering ashes down, and
I found I was standing in a carpet
of ashes.
He looked at me.
He dried my tears by that look of
tender love and forgiveness.
And I turned, and the next thing I
heard was, Mr., hurry, hurry, we're waiting for
you.
What are you standing there for?
And I walked out to the limousine, shocked.
I suppose there have been very few days
that I haven't thought about that and asked
the Lord to help me so to live
and to minister that in that day there
will be something to lay at His nail
-pierced feet, that it won't be just a
handful of ashes and wasted life and wasted
time and opportunity and privilege and neglected truth.
You say, you want a crown?
What are you going to do?
Strut around Heaven with a crown?
No.
No, I am not that.
God has to take the strut out of
you or aren't you going to make it
to Heaven.
I found out what they do with crowns,
and ever since then I want one, because
I found that the four and twenty elders
cast their crowns at His feet.
And I want something with which to say,
Thank you, Lord, for saving my soul.
Thank you, Lord, for making me whole.
Thank you, Lord, for giving to me my
great salvation, so full, so free.
Shall we pray?
Father of Jesus, we're here today, the last
service but one or two of this conference,
this first annual missionary conference.
The potential within this room for thy cause,
enormous.
We can't calculate what it would be if
everyone here with Paul say, I am crucified
with Christ.
Christ lives in me.
We're asking that there will be serious business
done with thee today.
That men and women who have played the
Christian life will begin to realize what a
marvelous privilege it is to be called the
children of God.
And who have played a Christian work in
service will decide now is the time to
get serious with the Lord.
Father, we pray for the young people who
have their whole lives to give to thee.
The older people that have their experience, their
judgment, their wisdom of the years to give
to thee to guide and help the young
people.
Lord, just the potential here is so enormous.
And oh, how we ask that the lamb
that was slain might through this congregation and
this people receive the reward