You are invited this evening to turn in
your Bible, don't be embarrassed if you are
not equipped with your sword, to Zechariah chapter
8 and the 20th verse.
Zechariah chapter 8 and verse 20.
This is what the Lord Almighty says, many
people and the inhabitants of many cities will
yet come and the inhabitants of one city
will go to another and say let us
go at once to entreat the Lord and
seek the Lord Almighty.
I myself am going and many people and
powerful nations will come to Jerusalem to seek
the Lord Almighty and to entreat him.
This is what the Lord Almighty says, in
those days ten men from all languages and
nations will take firm hold of one Jew
by the edge of his robe and say
let us go with you because we have
heard that God is with you.
Now the Prophet Zechariah is difficult to
interpret but in the able hands of Jim
Packer, a well known expositor who trained at
Oxford, England and who is known to be
a great lover of the Puritan divines and
the Puritan literature, he at a Southern Baptist
Founders Conference suggested an outline of interpretation of
the book of Zechariah or the first part
of it, concluding with this section which I
have just read.
Now it is interesting to observe that Jonathan
Edwards wrote in 1748 a very unusual treatise
in which he pleaded for a concert of
prayer to be organised for the outpouring of
the Holy Spirit in revival.
And this passage of scripture was one of
the scriptures which inspired those who responded to
the call of Jonathan Edwards.
That was a very significant call for what
he termed extraordinary prayer.
I would remind you that Jonathan Edwards is
rightly regarded by many as the best theologian
that has ever adorned the North American continent.
And I certainly am of that opinion myself.
Having sought to acquaint myself with a number
of your splendid theologians including Charles Hodge, A.
A.
Hodge, Dabney, Dagg and Boyce and others.
But certainly as a formulative thinker and as
an analytical theologian you could hardly improve on
Jonathan Edwards who has the reputation in the
history of the Church as being the theologian
of revival.
He experienced revival, he was able therefore to
analyse the elements of revival and he wrote
an amazing treatise called The Religious Affection in
which he analysed the true affections and emotions
of the soul.
Now let me return to this treatise which
he wrote.
It's not a long treatise but it has
a fairly long title.
Now the reason why men of that age
had long titles to their books was because
they did not have the advantage of the
gaily coloured dust covers that we have on
our books.
You simply had the bound volume and then
you looked inside and you'd find your title.
So in order to tell potential readers what
they were going to get for their money
they had to put on the title page
what their book was all about.
So if the title is a little longer
than you are accustomed to then you will
realise the reason therefore.
So let me read you the title.
An humble attempt to promote explicit agreement and
visible union of God's people in extraordinary prayer
for the revival of religion and the advancement
of Christ's kingdom on earth.
Pursuant to scripture promises and prophecy
concerning the last times.
Now Jonathan Edwards wrote another treatise called The
History of Redemption.
And in this treatise he sought to describe
the whole history of God's dealings with men
from the very beginning to the very end
of the age.
Without becoming controversial he was very much more
simple in his framework than are many modern
thinkers.
And he believed that this is the last
time, that this is the messianic age and
that this age is one of revival but
of increasing revival until the whole earth will
be evangelised.
And in order to motivate missionary endeavour he
searched after the promises.
And of course most of these come from
the Old Testament.
And the reason for that is very straightforward.
For instance Isaiah describes the Messiah in his
suffering and in the glory that followed.
But in the glory that followed the sufferings
of the Messiah there are descriptions about the
extent of his kingdom.
And it's quite obvious, indeed it's transparent that
the Messiah will have an increasing kingdom, a
victorious kingdom, an ever increasing and extending kingdom
to all people and all nations.
But not, no, a decreasing kingdom, a defeated
kingdom, one that shrinks and gets smaller and
smaller and then almost is ready to be
extinguished altogether.
Something that he would have to, in desperation,
come to deliver.
Rather, according not only to Edward but to
the theologians and expositors of those times, they
interpreted these passages as referring to the messianic
age and to the reign of the king.
Who now ever lived to intercede for us
and to whom all power in heaven and
on earth has been given for the express
intention that he should give momentum to his
cause throughout the earth, that the earth may
be filled with the knowledge of the glory
of God as the waters cover the sea.
And that is how they interpreted the passage
which I have read.
And it's one of many passages that could
be cited.
I remind you of verse 22.
They will come and they will say, let
us go at once to entreat the Lord
and seek the Almighty.
And then it says, and I myself am
going.
So there is this very resplendent, powerful statement
about the increase of the peoples and nations
who will come and entreat the Lord.
Now, how does this apply to ourselves today?
And that is my purpose this evening, to
apply this passage of scripture in a way
which is relevant for us.
And I'm going to do it under three
headings.
First of all, I'm going to refer to
our own heritage, our own history.
I'm going to ask the question, who are
we?
Who are we as Baptists who believe in
the sovereignty of God?
Who are we?
With whom do we identify?
That is my first question.
And then, what is our responsibility?
When we have identified ourselves, what is our
responsibility?
What are we to do?
What is our purpose?
And then third, what is our hope?
Once we have identified our purpose, our responsibility,
then what are we to do about it
with regard to hope?
How are we to go about it?
What is our hope?
What will motivate us in our responsibility?
Well then, first of all, who are we?
What is our history?
Where do we find people who believe as
we believe?
And the 1689 Confession, of course, helps us
to identify ourselves, gives us a kind of
passport in the modern evangelical world.
When I came to America this time, I
had to have a passport with a visa
printed inside, which gave me the right to
come into your country.
I couldn't enter here without it.
There's no way I could ever come into
your country without a visa.
And then, when I came, they could see
exactly who I was, where I lived, and
by looking through the passport, of course, a
few more details.
So, who are we?
We are Baptists.
And this church goes back a long way.
This is the first Baptist church of Clinton.
Well, if it's the first one, it ought
to be the best one.
It's been around long enough, so it really
should be the best one.
But we're not out to compete with people,
with other Christians.
But who are we?
Well, particular Baptists, Reformed Baptists, Baptists who believe
in the sovereignty of God, Baptists who believe
in the doctrines of Christ, emerged in England.
As far as we can see, emerged there
for the first time in history.
Now, I hope I don't offend some people
who think that they can trace that back
through all the centuries.
We can argue about that later.
But I personally don't think that that could
possibly be sustained.
Those who believe these doctrines of God's sovereignty,
as outlined in the 1689 Confession, they emerged
in the 17th century in England.
And they emerged under very difficult circumstances.
Because up until that time, the whole English
population had been required to conform to the
Church of England and her formulary, to her
prayer book.
And those who did not conform were subject
to arrest and imprisonment.
And indeed, Baptists, before the Puritan period, were
subject to the sentence of death.
And only this afternoon, Pastor Bill Ascol and
I were investigating the death of a young
woman during the reign of King Edward, the
young king, who was put to death.
Signed by Archbishop Cranmer, the death warrant, for
her to be burned at the stake for
being a Baptist.
Everybody was required to conform to the Church
of England, on pain of heavy fines or
imprisonment.
John Bunyan, of course, was many times imprisoned,
and under very great stress.
Now, when the Commonwealth period came, and I
won't go into all the history of it
because there's not time for that, in 1640
on to 1660 under Cromwell, mostly under Cromwell,
there was a time of freedom.
And when that time of freedom came, Baptists
emerged as those who believed in the Reformation.
And in the great truths that had been
re-asserted, re-discovered and re-asserted at
the Reformation, they believed those truths.
Most heartily, they embraced them.
And they said, we embrace all that.
We agree with Martin Luther and what he's
done.
We agree with John Calvin and the other
Reformers.
We agree with this great statement of truth
that the Presbyterians have put together in their
Westminster Confession of Faith.
We agree with that.
We accord with that.
We are Orthodox Christians.
But, we don't believe for one moment that
everybody in the country is Christian, or that
you can make them be Christian, or that
you can make them all conform.
We believe that the Church, for instance, of
those who are called, those who are converted,
those who have a credible profession of having
been born again, they are gathered together and
they form the Church.
So they wrote out their beliefs on Baptism
and on the nature of the Church, and
they changed those parts and said, yes, we
believe in the Reformation, but we believe also
as Baptists in the idea of a gathered
assembly of believers as the Church.
And that's what we are.
And they were called particular Baptists.
And they had to fight for their place
under the sun.
And they were very, very severely persecuted again
after the Commonwealth period.
Cromwell was a great man of freedom.
Freedom of conscience.
He believed in liberty of conscience.
And there was a respite for people to
do their study and so on.
But then Charles II came to the throne.
When Richard Cromwell was unable to keep the
country together, they had to have order and
law again.
And so they got monarchy back and the
persecution started all over again.
The great engine of persecution was rolled out
and now people were again subject to the
most awful fines and imprisonments if they were
anything else but Church of England.
So all the Baptists just sucked under and
kept quiet and just went on their way
and did the best they could.
Very often the magistrate could see that they
were such honourable upright people, the magistrates weren't
interested in persecution and got out of it
some way or another.
So that's how many of them survived those
days.
But the suffering was intense.
But then, when William of Orange came over,
when James II, who followed Charles II, the
son of Charles II, when he failed with
an abysmal failure, then the country called on
William to come over and to take the
throne and to be king.
That was the way they thought, that was
their system.
And he came and when he came there
was a general consensus that persecution does nothing,
there is no advantage in it.
So an act of toleration was passed whereby
Baptists could register their churches and other non
-conformists who were called dissenters could register their
churches.
And so the Baptists then came out from
hiding and said, great, now we can publish
our confession, which they did.
And so the 1689 Confession was published.
Now, that confession has been taken on into
America.
1744 it became the Philadelphia Confession of Faith
and has been used in America very greatly
in your history.
But C.A. Exspurgeon took the same confession
when he as a young, young preacher came
to London, to Subbot, to New Pass Street,
on the south side of the Thames, and
had a tremendous ministry, none like it in
all Baptist history like the ministry of C
.A. Exspurgeon.
He began his ministry by saying, this is
what I believe.
And he was unashamed of it.
And he preached that all his life, always
faithful to the great truth of the Confession.
And now, in the late 20th century there
is a revival of these very truths.
And it's springing up, I'm glad to tell
you, all over the world.
And it's beginning to spring up in other
languages.
And so I come back to my text,
or the passage.
Many people and the inhabitants of many cities
will come.
And the inhabitants of one city will go
to another and say, let us go at
once to entreat the Lord and to seek
the Lord Almighty.
And many peoples and powerful nations will come
to Jerusalem to seek the Lord Almighty and
entreat Him.
Now, you have to observe some humanistic, some
principles of interpretation of all these things.
Every prophet was bound by his own environment
as far as his descriptive powers were concerned.
Jerusalem stands for the cause of God in
the earth.
Hence we get that prayer that we will
give God no rest until he makes Jerusalem
a praise in the earth.
Well, you don't mean by that that Jerusalem,
now in our modern age, must be a
most beautiful architectural piece.
Or that he must now have the best
church in the world, although we all have
to have a conference over there.
It's not a conference hall large enough over
there anyway to seek the Lord.
It doesn't mean that.
It's a symbol and has been in biblical
history for ages.
Jerusalem stands for God's cause in the world.
His cause will prosper.
And his cause will so prosper that mighty
nations will be affected by his cause.
And so we have an identity in this
modern world.
We know what we believe.
We formulate what we believe.
We preach what we believe.
And we are not severing ourselves from other
believers who may not believe like us, who
may differ from us.
We don't want to excommunicate them, so less
do we want to send them to burn
them at the stake.
We don't believe in that.
We believe in maximising our unity with all
believers as much as we can.
Now obviously if there are groups of people
who behave in such an alarming way that
we can't worship them, because they go wild,
or famous enough, or do something like that,
well we have to keep them at arm's
bay.
We say, well the Lord bless you with
sanity and may it come soon.
But we don't excommunicate them, nor do we
wish the fires of heaven to come down
to consume them or anything like that.
We don't do that.
They're obviously on the Lord's side, but they
need some instruction.
So we're patient.
And there are all kinds of denominations.
With the Presbyterians we do have a very
good unit.
We really do.
But we insist that there is enough water
for that fire.
They've always said that at the time of
Pentecost there was not enough water to do
all this.
They said it's ridiculous to think that Peter
and the other, and the twelve, or the
disciples, however many of them there may have
been, fifty or sixty men who were capable
of baptising, that they've always suggested, and the
very men I love, theologians like Hodges, these
believers, that there just simply wasn't enough water
to do a thing like that.
It's just totally unbelievable.
So let me tell you that I have
now an article coming into Reformation today, not
the next one 108, but number 109, researched
out by a Reformed Baptist from Australia who's
been working with Yadin, who is one of
the great archaeological experts in Jerusalem.
And they've now discovered forty-eight mikvahs from
the time of the apostles.
And all the water systems that fed the
mikvahs, the mikvah was an ablution pool.
Six steps down, six steps out, and forty
-seven inches high.
That was the specification.
And they've unearthed forty-eight of these.
So there wasn't a problem.
There was water in Jerusalem.
I've always known that, because I'm an architect
by profession, you can't have a city without
water.
It's just impossible.
So I've always believed there'd be enough water
there.
But now we can prove it from archaeology.
But I wrote a book, not long ago,
called the Texts and Years of Baptism.
And we've unearthed, or archaeologists have unearthed, beautiful
baptisteries from the apostolic period.
In Syria, in Italy, in North Africa, all
over the place.
And there's mosaics on them, they've been very
nice.
But the Jews used to have ablutions, washing.
We read in Hebrews 10, your body is
washed with pure water.
So we don't think it's a terrible thing
at all, to baptise a person.
There are people who've been against us about
that.
They've suggested all kinds of things.
They've suggested you might get pneumonia if you
give a bath in water.
But many people swim.
It's not a problem.
It really isn't a difficulty.
The Jews have always had ablutions.
They've kept it up.
Orthodox Jews still have ablutions of immersion, where
the whole body is washed.
And in the early church they like running
water, just to make it a little more
illustrious.
The washing away of your sins.
So we don't want to fight with our
brothers.
We want to be really, really brotherly.
They believe as we do, on 95%
of the great truth.
But we still insist that that is what
the Bible says.
John the Baptist baptised at the place called
Enon because there was much water there.
Now if it was a matter of a
few drops, he could have easily availed himself
of one flask and that would have done
the trick.
But why go over there and be so
zealous?
Well of course he needed the water to
do his process.
So we are believers in the Reformation.
We believe that.
We believe in the great doctrines.
We really do.
Wholeheartedly.
But we insist on being Baptists.
And we do not think that that is
something of no account, of no importance.
We believe it's important.
Because Baptism actually forms the structure and the
nature of the church.
It tells you what the church should be.
It tells you how the church should be
formed.
It should be formed of people who come
confessing their sins, who repent of their sins,
and who believe in Jesus Christ and are
united to him in his death, burial, and
resurrection.
Symbolised in an immersion.
Now some people have written to me about
this and they say well we all must
pray a bit about this.
But we can't find a mention of water
in Romans chapter 6.
Well fair enough.
Why should the Apostle every time have to
mention water?
He mentions it in Hebrews 12 and Peter
mentions it incidentally as well.
About water.
You don't have to mention the thing every
time.
But my answer to them is if you
can find something better to baptise in, well
then find it.
You can't do it in sand because you'll
get a headache if you try to baptise
a man in sand.
So what are you going to do if
you don't use water?
What are you going to bury a man
in?
I don't know.
Certainly you wouldn't bury him in sulphuric acid.
You'd bury him in water.
Preferably if you feel cold in warm water
to make it comfortable.
So we believe that.
But we don't want to have bad relationships.
Nor do we want to upset them.
I am invited to churches in Scotland and
I enjoy preaching there and of course I
keep quiet.
I don't go in there to blaspheme the
Baptist because I don't want to be blasphemed
after myself anyway.
But I really do want to have good
relationships.
We must have unity.
But we identify ourselves.
That's what we are.
We are spiritual now.
We really are.
Many people read Spurgeon and love Spurgeon without
always investigating what he believes.
He believes in the sovereignty of God.
He believes in the Reformation.
He believes in the Puritan Rites.
He saw their value.
He recommended them.
And we have noticed recently, at the time
of the first centenary of the 300th birthday
of the 1689 Confession, we have observed that
whenever the churches in England have been close
to this Confession they fasted.
Now before I go on to our responsibility,
which will be quite brief because it's only
a reminder of our responsibility, let me follow
up what I told you at the beginning.
In 1748 this thesis of Jonathan Edwards was
produced.
And it found its way over, as we
would expect, because he had friends in Scotland.
A man by the name of John Erskine
corresponded with Edwards and he got hold of
this thesis and he told his friends about
it.
And he told John Ryland Jr. down in
England about it.
And John Ryland Jr. told John Sutcliffe, another
friend about it.
And John Sutcliffe got hold of this thing
and was really inspired by it.
And he said, look we've got to really
do something about it.
This humble attempt to promote extraordinary prayer is
something we've got to get down to.
And he really worked at it.
And he said, look in our vastest association
of churches who believe in these doctrines, let
us meet every Monday night for one hour
and pray for the extraordinary calling of God's
Spirit.
This will be a time of extraordinary prayer
for a time of extraordinary outpouring of God's
Spirit.
God's reviving power.
We need that.
The churches were going down.
And they were alarmed and they were concerned.
And the mission field was out there and
nobody was going to the mission field.
So they were really alarmed about it.
So they said, let's heed this Jonathan Edwards,
let's heed his appeal and really, what is
12 hours a year?
That's not asking too much.
12 hours a year in earnest prayer together,
every Monday night, once a month, let's pray.
So they got down to it and they
began to pray.
And you know what happened?
In the next 40 years, the churches quadrupled
from 300 that went right up to nearly
1400 churches.
That's how the movement grew and revived from
the time they sought God earnestly in prayer.
And you know what happened?
William Carey came out of that.
The first great, tremendous missionary heralding the way
in the modern age, the modern age of
missions.
William Carey came out of this entreaty for
people to pray together.
And even though the situation seemed impossible, he
went out against all the impossibilities to India
and persevered and was later joined by brilliant
men, missionaries.
A man by the name of Marshall, another
man by the name of Ward.
They worked together as a dynamic team, publishing
the scriptures, preaching the word, evangelising, patiently he
waited eight years for his first convict.
But he believed the promises.
And because he was inspired by the veracity
and power of the promises of God, he
went on with his work and triumphed in
his work.
So who are we?
Well we are Careyites, we believe that, we
love that, we look for that.
Here is our idea.
We want the fact that Bible Presbyterian churches
are multiplying in the Philippines.
Well done, it's Koreans that are doing that,
not Europeans.
Koreans who have experienced a great revival in
Korea and who have more seminaries for their
staff than you do here in the United
States of America.
It is the Koreans that are doing it.
It was thrilling.
The time of the Olympic Games in England,
the commentator said, well we are not expecting
so many people tomorrow in the stadium.
He said they go to church in this
country, he said, and down the road there
is a church of 10,000 people.
What he didn't say was the church of
10,000 people was filled over twice because
10,000 wasn't big enough.
So we are glad, we are absolutely thrilled,
we are enthralled, we are delighted that the
Bible Presbyterian churches of Korea are reaching out
to Plum churches in the Orient and different
other parts of Indonesia and all over the
place.
Hooray!
And we are inspired by the fact that
there has been a colossal change in the
whole face of the world as far as
Christianity is concerned.
The year 1800, 99% of professing Christians
were Western Europeans.
Now we only constitute 33% and all
the rest are other people.
And it is rapidly changing so that we
are coming down to be a smaller minority.
Hooray!
A thousand hallelujahs!
We want that to be made for all
those people, the Chinese believers, the sooner the
better.
And Japanese, and Indonesians, and Filipinos, and on
and on and on it goes.
That is what we want.
And it will happen when they all start
evangelising each other.
Why should the burden only rest with us?
They will come from every quarter.
Many people and powerful nations will come to
seek the Lord and entreat him.
So now that we have our identity, we
find that we are not without doctrine.
We are not like the Quakers.
You know the Quakers during that time of
Oliver Cromwell, they emerged as a very powerful
people, as numerous as the Baptists, the Reformed
Baptists.
They were just as numerous, were led by
a very godly man called George Fox.
A gentleman.
Whenever there was an English gentleman he was
the one.
Never complained under his imprisonment or his persecution.
Perfect gentleman.
A godly, godly man.
But there was one problem with the Quakers.
They went by their feelings.
Now feelings are good, we must have feelings.
I wouldn't like to be married to a
wife who never had any feelings.
It wouldn't be any good would it?
We need to have feelings.
We're not zombies, we're not machines, we're people.
Why?
Well the Quakers, with all sincerity, they put
feelings up top.
It's what you see.
It's the Holy Spirit moving your feelings.
Well that's a good point, but you've got
to start with the scriptures.
It's the scripture and then our feelings.
So we're not that.
We don't say well, you know we have
a confession of faith but every page is
a blank one.
We can't say what we believe.
Well we can say what we believe.
Very clearly we say what we believe.
And we've pleased the Don.
The Church has always been compelled to specify
what it believes.
Otherwise we'd be overrun by every count on
the front.
We've got to be able to say what
we believe about the person of Christ.
Of course we must.
What we believe about Scripture.
We must say that.
Who God is we must say what it
is.
But Scripture references.
I would throw this confession away if it
didn't have the Scripture references.
You know at the Westminster Assembly they produced
a confession that didn't have references.
And the members of Parliament sent it straight
back.
They said we want the references in there,
this good confession you're doing there, but can
we have the references.
So who are we?
Well we're not Quakers.
And we love the Presbyterians, they are our
brothers, but we're not Presbyterians.
We believe in the Church gathered.
And we're certainly not Episcopalians.
Although I must make a confession.
It may be controversial to some of you.
I'd rather have the government of the Episcopacy,
that is bishops and archbishops, than no government.
Because if you have no government you're going
to have pandemoniums.
And some churches that are independent behave as
though they're like the Vatican, as though they're
the only church on earth and just do
what they like.
And that's ridiculous.
And then the cause of Christ gets into
a very very bad state of reputation.
People say well look at the Church of
Christ and it's just disreputable.
These people just behave like lunatics.
So I'd much prefer to have order than
no order.
And in the early centuries if there wasn't
an Episcopacy we wouldn't have survived.
They did have bishops, but they were very
much better bishops than we have today.
They were believing bishops.
That's why we have survived.
And they got together when there was a
crisis and they did something about it.
And there were reasons why it was like
that.
Pragmatic reasons, practical reasons why it was like
that in the early centuries.
And God overruled it, for our good.
But now we have elders and deacons, and
we believe that elders have authority, but they
mustn't abuse their authority.
And I would suggest that we should do
what we've always done, as confessional people who
believe in the confession of faith, that we
should have associations.
Regional associations so our pastors can come together
and confer together.
Not to rule each other, or to come
and subvert any church.
No, let every church have its independence, but
at least let there be a court of
appeal, and let us work together.
And this is the RBMF that I came
over, so encouraging to see churches harmonizing, working
together.
Using their gifts together, we can do so
much if we work together.
But now I'm telling people in the SBC,
which is the largest Presbyterian church there's ever
been, as far as governance is concerned.
When people say, what is Presbyterianism, I say,
well look at the Southern Baptist Convention.
It's the biggest Presbyterian church as far as
governance is concerned that the world's ever known.
Because they all have the same fund, and
so there it is.
But of course that's undigressing, so forgive me
for that.
But who are we?
Well, we do identify with these things.
The other day, just before I came here,
I was preaching in Bradford on AIDS.
A church of over 300 years of age,
and unlike you they haven't had so many
ups and downs.
They have really consistently through that whole period,
been in the truth, and are forging ahead
today.
What a wonderful testimony.
So for 300 years I know where I
am.
I have identity for at least 300 years.
We identify with clergy.
We identify with the people who adopted the
Philadelphia Confession of Faith, which is the same
thing, virtually.
Now, having described who we are, very briefly,
what is our responsibility?
What is the work we have to do?
Well, there's no clearer statement than Matthew 28.
This is a great commission.
And that is our responsibility.
What are we to do?
Well, we are to go and teach all
nations.
Where do we start?
Well, the best place to start, of course,
is here, in your own area.
But that's not enough.
Because if you just stick to this area,
what about all the other un-evangelized countries?
How can you fulfill your responsibility then?
All nations, it says, not just one nation,
all nations.
Well, it's inconceivable that you can do all
nations.
But it is conceivable that you can help
with one or two nations.
So I ask you, are there any young
men here who are going to be missionaries?
Is there a William Carey here?
Or, if you haven't got one, are you
supporting somebody who is preparing to spend his
life going out and devoting his life to
another nation?
Are you doing that?
Well, if you're not doing it, why not
think about going in with other churches and
sharing with them to do it.
And sharing with them in a meaningful way,
so that you can follow the missionary with
your prayer.
And give him the support that he needs.
But we all have to ask ourselves, what
do we do?
I'm very happy at the moment, I'm very,
very pleased because I've been given the commission
by a church in England to spend time,
to promote missionary endeavour.
Church planting in England, and to spread the
truth abroad and to encourage church planting in
other nations.
And I have a commission to travel.
I have a church behind me to support
me in travelling to go to other nations
and to stir them up and to unite
them and to spread the word far and
wide and to discover places that are not
evangelised so that we can evangelise.
He took a fair portion, guided by the
Spirit of God, a fair portion, and he
chose up certain things, main things that Jesus
did, and the outcome of those were recorded,
and he put that down.
And the sequel, what happens?
So we're told more or less what Peter
did at the beginning, and then the Apostle
Paul takes over the academic, and we need
an academic to formulate things for us, and
so we have a completed scripture.
But we're not told about what Philip did,
or Bartholomew, or what these men did, or
Thomas, they went to these different places.
And they are familiar, and they keep the
word, to obey the commission.
And we must do the same.
There's a tremendous amount of mobility in the
New Testament, have you not noticed the book
of Acts, they seem to be travelling everywhere,
but they take the word with them.
They just want, they're linking up together, they're
keeping their unity.
That is our responsibility.
As much as we are able to take
an intelligent, a prayerful interest in the extension
of Christ's kingdom to other nations, we are
to read about it.
William Carey began by reading about Captain Cook's
travels, couldn't wait to get further news.
He read everything he could about it, even
before he came to India he was learning
the language, so that when he got there
he would already know so much of the
language.
We are to be informed, and if we
are to have extraordinary prayer, then we need
to have information to pray.
That means work, somebody has to be researching
us out, making us interesting, stirring us up
so we can pray fervently.
We need news, we need information, so we
can fulfil our responsibility.
My bedside book is Operation World, my Bible,
and Operation World.
Operation World gives an outline of all nations,
except some parts of the Soviet Union, because
they don't know enough about it anyway, to
publish it.
So we must fulfil our responsibility, and it's
very important to have prayer fuelled by information.
And we need to improve in our earnestness,
and in our prayerfulness, we need to improve,
become more disciplined in earnest prayer for revival
upon our own church, upon our nations, and
upon the nations of the world.
That is our responsibility.
Finally, thirdly, what is our hope?
Well our hope is the fulfilment of the
promise, and this evening I have chosen this
text in Zechariah.
Many people, and the inhabitants of many cities
will yet come, and the inhabitants of one
city will go to another and say, let
us go at once to entreat the Lord,
and seek the Lord Almighty.
And then it interjects, I myself am going,
are you going?
I am going, I am going to seek
the Lord.
And many peoples and powerful nations will come
to Jerusalem to seek the Lord Almighty and
to entreat Him.
And in those days, he says, he is
inferring there will be such a hunger, that
ten men from all languages and nations will
take firm hold of one Jew by the
edge of his robe and say, let us
go with you.
And again it's their way in the Old
Testament of expressing tremendous spiritual appetite.
Here is the man who knows the truth
and take hold of him, and we are
not going to let him go.
We want this man to teach us.
Longing, desire for the truth.
And who brings this appetite?
The Holy Spirit quickens this appetite.
The people long for the gospel, long to
hear the truth.
Only the Holy Spirit can engender that appetite.
But what is our hope?
Well our hope is the fulfillment of these
promises.
That all of these writers, Jonathan Edwards and
the other writers, they all looked at Romans
11.
And they looked at verses like Romans 11
and verse 15.
Where we read, for if their rejection, that
is the Jews, of the reconciliation of the
world, what will their acceptance be but life
from the dead?
Just this week I was given a magazine
describing a work among the Jews in the
Argentine.
An increasing number of ponderers among the Jews
in the Argentine.
Well how did all those Jews get to
the Argentine anyway?
Well that is not very difficult because they
were driven out of Europe and went to
the Argentine.
But how thrilling to learn that they are
being evangelized and that there is a response
among us.
In our town, in our city of Leeds,
the biggest structures are not sudden Baptist churches
or Baptist churches or even Anglican churches.
The best defended biggest structures are synagogues in
Leeds, England.
And we have just simply got to pray
about that and do something about it.
We can't just let that go by.
Here are promises, do we believe them?
The Prophet Isaiah complains, I believe it is
toward the end of his prophecy, he complains
that the Lord is a pawn.
Nobody takes his promises seriously.
He makes promises, nobody takes them seriously.
So eventually Isaiah says, well if nobody is
going to take them seriously I have to
act on my own, says the Lord.
But we mustn't be like that.
We must look at the promises, we must
heed the promises.
There are promises in the Psalms.
Psalm 2, the Lord says, Yahweh says, I
have set my King upon my holy hill
of Zion.
And because I have set him there, now
ask of me and I will give you
the nations for your inheritance and the uttermost
parts of the earth for your possession.
I have set him there as King, now
he is King.
Ask me for the nations, come on ask
me for them.
We are living in a time when one
powerful man can reach a whole nation if
he is well thought and determined and a
powerful preacher.
And there are hungry nations.
I was telling Brother Bill Ascol at our
visit to Malawi, right in the heart of
Africa.
And there is so much work to do
there, so many people who are willing to
receive the Gospel and listen to the Gospel.
You can start at six in the morning
and you can end at midnight.
And you can do that every day.
Such is the opportunity.
So we must take these promises.
And then that promise that our Lord Jesus
so often repeated, Psalm 110.
The Lord says to my Lord, sit at
my right hand until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet.
The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from
Zion.
You will rule in the midst of your
enemies.
And then when we turn to one quotation,
there are several quotations of that in the
New Testament.
We turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 15 and
verse 25.
We read, for he must reign until he
has put all his enemies under his feet.
The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
So let's suppose that the Lord has enemies.
There are demonic religions.
There are the religions of darkness and superstition,
by which millions of people are deceived.
These are enemies.
But what are we going to do about
it?
Oh we must pray about it.
We must be concerned about it.
Because these enemies will be conquered.
But they must be conquered.
They must be overcome.
But they can't be overcome unless there is
fervent gospel preached.
The light must remove the darkness.
Light is more powerful than darkness.
But we must spread the light.
So we have hope.
And now I conclude.
We have a history.
We know what we believe.
We have a substantial confession of faith.
A world tried over hundreds of years.
We know what we believe.
We know who we are.
We are learning more about cooperation and unity.
We know who we are.
We know what a Christian is.
A Christian is one who has repentance and
faith.
Are you a Christian?
Are you sure that you are a Christian?
Have you repented?
Have you believed?
Are you in union now with Christ?
The only way you can know that you
are a Christian.
I have union with him now.
I am one with him now.
Therefore I am a Christian.
Not that I have made a decision some
ten years ago.
Maybe you made another decision five years ago.
But that's where it ended.
It's not making decisions.
It's being in union with Christ.
You can make ten thousand decisions if you're
not in union with Christ.
You're not a Christian.
A Christian is one with Christ now.
I'm a Christian because I know him now.
I am in union with him now.
That's why I'm a Christian.
I'm not resting on something in the past.
My memory can tell me I'm a Christian
now.
Are you a Christian?
Well if you are a Christian do you
believe the doctrines?
Do you believe the Bible?
Do you believe the truth?
Do you believe the confession?
Are you well grounded?
Do you know your identity?
Well if you do then you have a
big responsibility.
A major responsibility because now you must take
this and for the earth as Jesus said
in the commission.
All things, not some things, if you can
choose some pleasant things, happy things and leave
the rest.
Heaven and hell must be preached to all
the world.
To all nations.
The whole truth.
All the counsel of God must be preached.
All of it.
In it's vast proportion must be preached.
That's their responsibility.
It's very hard as it was for them
at the beginning.
They had to go back to Jerusalem, to
the very place where they found Jesus Christ.
They had to go back there and confront
these ferocious Pharisees, the Sanhedrin and all the
rest who had done that, who had imbued
their hands with the blood of the Son
of God.
They had to go back to those people
and their preach.
That took tremendous courage.
But where did it come from?
It came from the Holy Spirit.
Our responsibility is to say right there is
this great work.
Let's pray about this.
Let's get on with it.
Let's see what we can do.
Let's contribute to this.
Let's gradually, we won't do it overnight.
We'll gradually increase the volume of our prayer
and the intensity of our prayer.
We'll seek God for this.
We will do it.
We will.
We will work together.
We can't send somebody else, ourselves.
We'll work with others and we'll send them
to the ends of the earth.
We will do it.
And we know we will succeed.
This is the promises of God.
And they are to be taken seriously.
Beautiful promises, eloquent promises.
That even mighty nations will seek the Lord.
We're living in a time of mighty nations.
The mighty Soviet Union.
Can you believe that?
A change there.
Can you believe it?
I can.
China.
Look at China.
We're ready to write China off.
And look at the terrific, what they say,
50 million Christians now in China.
I've got a personal friend who's writing a
PhD thesis on the increase of the evangelical
churches in China.
Mighty nations.
That's the largest nation in the world.
Brazil.
Argentina.
Then there's Japan.
I was reading Christianity today.
And about Japan.
What a desperately needy nation.
Possibly the cleverest people.
With all due respect to you Americans, even
technology cleverer than you are.
But so superstitious and such bandits.
Such a clever people, intelligent with their fingers
and yet so blind as to the truth.
Will this mighty nation, with its financial power
right at the top of the league.
Will that nation believe?
Well we must pray for them.
I pray for them.
Indonesia, they have made big strides to believe
it.
But a vast amount yet to be done.
Philippines, very encouraging.
And so we can go on.
Now India.
I've got a friend, John Armstrong, who's been
to India.
It's challenging.
Horrible.
He's been to India.
They worked him to death.
He staggered back to London.
And he couldn't, he was so tired he
couldn't even phone me up.
He was exhausted from preaching to large, large
crowds in Andhra Pradesh, in southern India, in
the province of Andhra Pradesh.
So the population is about as big as
England.
A huge area of population.
But he's been absolutely transformed in his new
life.
He's passionate to go back and take others
back.
He's never had such congregation, never seen such
a thing in all his life.
He can't get there that fast enough.
And then he's got the promises to encourage
us.
The Lord is not against that.
It's for us.
It is hard work.
And it does require prayer.
And we must pray.
We must have extraordinary prayer.
We must become earnest.
We must study these things.
We must be burdened by them.
But I say it's something that gradually increases
on us.
Because Jesus will have the victory.
He will indeed.
To him be all the honour and praise
forever and ever.
Amen.