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Well, what a wonderful time to be back on campus with you for this missions week. It was 40 years ago this fall that I came to campus and was declared a Southwesterner by President Emeritus Dr. Robert Naylor, and what a what an honor to be back on campus this week. We’re really looking forward to what God is going to do among this student body in raising up laborers for the harvest.
We used to say that the sun never sets on Southwesterners. When we returned from our journeyman experience, my journeyman experience overseas in Scotland, this was the place everyone came, and I pray it is so again, that this would be the place where we raise up laborers for the harvest and train and equip them to go to the nations. So, as we begin this morning, let’s pray. Let’s go to the Lord in prayer.
Father, we thank you that you are the Lord of the harvest. Lord, you call out harvesters. You call out laborers to be a part of that harvest. Lord, as we look out in our world today, there’s so much strife and war and hatred and bitterness among peoples. Lord, there’s war that is happening in Ukraine, Russia, in the Middle East, in Sudan. Biggest humanitarian crisis in the world. There are terrible disasters that have struck millions of people just in the last month in Venezuela and Colombia, and now in Nepal. Lord, people are suffering around the world. They’re asking, why? Lord, may your laborers be there to answer that question.
For there is a Prince of Peace who offers real peace, real peace that comes through salvation in Christ. And Lord, I pray that you would raise up laborers even this week from this student body to go to the nations to bring good news for people desperately in need of it. For it’s in Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
Well, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, a great harvest is coming. In the book of Revelation, we get glimpses of glory. We get glimpses of a future reality, where people from every nation, tribe, people, and language are going to gather before that throne, and they’re going to worship the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. So, if you have your Bibles this morning, I know you do. Open to Revelation chapter seven. We’ll be looking at a few more verses than what Dr. Dockery read this morning.
As you’re turning there, I want to bring you greetings on behalf of 3,600 missionaries serving in over 150 countries around the world. Thank you for your prayers, for your giving, for your equipping and educating, for your sending and for going yourself. And I want to thank the Southwestern staff and faculty for the encouragement and the equipping they gave to Susan and I as we were here preparing ourselves to serve as missionaries around the world. Susan and I met here on the Holy Hill. We met and married within 10 months. So you know, when you find a good thing, you just you got to take care of business. We got married at Halton Road Baptist Church, and I managed to cram a three-year MDiv into four and a half years. Susan worked in the provost’s office for Doctors Newport and Toller, and we became very much a part of the life of the seminary. Those were really, really good years for us, and we’re so thankful for them. And I was able to take advantage of many many hours in the library while I was here, as I know many of you do as well.
I hope you know, or you will learn that the lifeline for your IMB missionaries comes through the cooperative program and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. 100% of every dollar you give to the Lottie Moon Mission Offering goes to missionaries overseas. You may not know that over 60% of cooperative program dollars that come to the IMB also go overseas to support those missionaries. So, thank you, pastors and church staff members, and future pastors and church staff members, as you lead your church to be generous givers to the Lottie Moon Offering, the Annie Armstrong offering, and also the Cooperative Program. These offerings are essential for us if we’re going to continue to have missionaries planted among lostness around the world.
Around 90% of your IMB missionaries are engaging at least one unreached people group in our world today. Besides everything else they’re doing in equipping and preparing missionaries and training pastors as they do their work around the world, and because of your faithfulness and your generosity and giving, you’re part of a global movement that is seeing lives transformed every day around the world. And this morning, I want to share some of those stories of transformation, and I want to share a few metrics that we use to gauge our impact around the world, as well.
You know, God’s heartbeat for the nations that we see in the Great Commission is not something we can pick or not pick among a smorgasbord of good things to do in a church. It’s an imperative, and we all have a part to play in the Great Commission, whether it’s in praying, or in giving, or in educating, or equipping, or in sending, or in going yourself. As I share these stories, I want you to consider your part in the Great Commission. No matter what part you play in your local church, we all have a part to play in the Great Commission itself. If God is calling you to the nations, there’s likely a pathway that we can send you through the International Mission Board.
What is it that missionaries do when they get overseas? Well, a couple of these metrics will give you just a brief insight into what our missionaries do when they’re serving overseas and they’re seeking to reach lostness. Last year, our missionaries, along with their closest national partners, shared the gospel over 2 million times. Among those who heard the gospel, over 196,000 said, “Yes, I want to follow Jesus as my Lord and Savior.”
And then we look at church planting around the world, and last year over 7,600 churches were planted across the planet. And then there’s another number that we take very careful attention of, and that’s the number of new leaders that we’re training. And last year we trained over 68,000 new leaders. Now, what do we train them to do? Well, we train them to evangelize, to make disciples, to plant churches, to pastor churches, to preach the word of God, to do biblical counseling. And last year we trained 15,976 in theology and doctrine.
Now, one day, every person who has been won throughout every generation to Christ will gather before that throne. With every people group, every nation, tribe, people, and language, they will gather before that throne and worship the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We just read about that in Revelation seven nine and ten. Now the vision at the International Mission Board is based on that passage, and it’s to see a multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language knowing and worshiping our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, what does that vision do for us? Well, that vision keeps us from mission drift. It keeps us focused on getting the gospel to lost peoples. You see, there are a lot of problems in our world today. There are so many things that we could address as a mission agency, and we do address. We help find people that have been taken in human trafficking as slaves, and we rescue them out of those terrible situations that they’re in. We alleviate famine through community development projects. We provide trauma counseling for those dealing with PTSD and depression in war zones and refugee camps around the world, and we provide compassionate relief for those who have lost everything through devastating disasters. And we’ve certainly seen that on the news so often in the past month. And our partner in these efforts is Send Relief. Send Relief is the best kept secret in the in the Southern Baptist Convention, every dollar given to Send Relief goes directly to help that particular disaster zone, and your IMB missionaries are the ones that are delivering that relief.
And so, relief not only comes with helping people with compassionate help, but it also comes with the gospel. It comes with the good news of Christ, but you know something? All of these problems end the day we die, but there’s one problem that never ends, and that’s lostness, being eternally separated from a holy and loving God. Our researchers tell us that every day around the world, 160,000 people will die and enter a Christless eternity, forever separated from the One who created them. So when we enter those red light districts and those disaster zones and war zones and refugee camps, we not only bring compassionate help, but we bring hope, and the only hope that truly transforms people is the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, between the Great Commission Jesus gave us and that great multitude we see in Revelation seven nine, we’re challenged to join the great pursuit. The great pursuit is focused on the world’s greatest problem, lostness, so that those lost ones would come to know the great Shepherd of their souls.
So this morning, I want to ask four questions of our passage in Revelation seven, nine, and 10. Hopefully, maybe you’ll hold that closer to your heart as we answer these questions about this passage. The first question: Who are the great multitude? Now, the scripture states that God desires all people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. But we know that people must hear the gospel, and they must respond by faith, repent, and believe, and put their faith in Christ. So let’s break down that vision in three circles that become ever more focused. And we’ll begin with all places. Then we’ll think about all peoples, and then we’ll think about every person.
When we focus on getting the gospel to all places in the world, that means everywhere. Jesus made that clear in Acts one eight when He said, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest parts of the Earth.” All places includes megacities teeming with millions of people. It includes sparsely populated vast deserts. It includes endless oceans with tens of thousands of islands. Now we’re getting to almost every geopolitical nation in the world, but there are those that do everything they can to try to keep the gospel out. They don’t want the gospel to penetrate their culture, their people.
One of those countries is a South Asian country that boldly proclaims that they are 100% Muslim. I saw a video not long ago of two men who were treading water by a boat off of one of the islands in that island nation, and one man put his hand over the other and said, “I baptize you, my brother in Christ, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” And he dunked them down under the ocean. So I know for a fact that that country is not 100% Muslim any longer.
God is at work among the nations, but still, there are lost people out there. After 2,000 years of receiving the Great Commission, millions are still waiting for the gospel to arrive in their hometown for the very first time, and our mandate as disciples of Christ is to get the gospel out from our hometown in ever-expanding circles to the world. That leads us to our second circle.
If the gospel reaches a country and there are churches established in that country, does that mean the work in that place is finished? Before Jesus ascended to heaven, he gave the disciples the most well-known of the Great Commission passages we read earlier during our worship time, Matthew 2819 and 20: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe or to obey all I have commanded you, and lo, or remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Jesus uses that term “panta ta ethne, and I first heard that term in intro to missions class on this campus when Dr. Sanchez was teaching that class, I’d never heard panta ta ethne before in my life, and he began to explain to us that this doesn’t refer to geopolitical nations. This refers to unique people groups in our world today.
We began to see peoples in a new light, millions of people, unique people groups, are living in lostness today, totally unengaged and unreached with the gospel. In fact, over 3000 unreached, unengaged people groups remain on our list at peoplegroups.org. A couple of years ago, we decided we’re going to do something about that, and we started Project 3000, and we started a new pathway to the field called Missionary Explorer. Now, these explorers, they have a little bit extra training. They have to pass the Army Fitness Test to become a Missionary Explorer. They also get extra training at the end of our regular training and learn how to engage unengaged people groups, how to find them, how to research them, how to engage them with the gospel.
You see, for those 3000, there’s no one looking for them. As far as we know, there are no believers, even churches, among those people groups, and they live behind barriers and bondages and gatekeepers that want to keep the gospel out at all cost. So each missionary explorer receives a list of 10 UUPGs, unengaged, unreached people groups, and they go after them. They usually partner with a national partner who goes with them, but they ford rivers, they hack their way through jungles, they traverse mountain passes, trying to find these people groups. Some of them are like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Recently, a missionary explorer journeyed into the mountains of Cote d’Ivoire, Ivory Coast. He thought he was looking for a UUPG, but it turned out the gospel had quietly taken root among the people, and there was even a church there that he found. As he talked with the church members there, they told him of how they had come to faith in Christ and how they had even sent a couple of missionaries out to go to another unreached people group nearby. So he went on his way and he found those two missionaries. And as he talked to those two missionaries, he showed him his list of 10, and they said, “Well, I think we might know where some of these are.”
And so they went to another area. They began to research and look for them, and they found one of those people groups. The missionary explorer had to keep going on his journey, but those two missionaries stayed. And several months later, he got a call out of the blue from two very excited missionaries. They said, “10 people from that people group have come to faith in Christ, including the village chief.” So today, from that tribe, they’re now raising up another missionary to go to the nations. So here we have a missionary explorer who’s going out, thinking he’s finding a UUPG and finds a church. That church has already sent out missionaries. He finds them. They go look for another UUPG. That UUPG is reached with the gospel, and then they’re now sending out missionaries to another UUPG. That’s the ripple effect of the gospel of disciples multiplying by making other disciples. When the church catches a vision for the great multitude, and they have a great urgency to go after those lost people, the gospel gets to places it’s never been before.
Well, Jesus takes that circle and makes it ever smaller to every person. What does He say in Mark 16:15? Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation until every person has an opportunity to hear. Now, friends, that’s a lot of people in our world today. That’s over 8.3 billion people. Just 100 years ago, the global population was 1.9 billion. You can see how the challenge of this verse has exponentially increased in just 100 years, and that’s our challenge to get the good news to every person.
And a few years ago, we developed a new map which shows the sheer lostness of humanity across the world, and that map is full of red dots, and every red dot represents 50,000 lost people. So you can see on that map, we have a lot of work to do, even here in our own country. But going out to the nations, you see the lostness on that map. Sheer lostness of getting the gospel to all creation is a huge task before us.
Paxi Party caught that vision of reaching every person in his province.
Paxi Party is a furniture maker with a greater mission to reach the lost sheep of Java, one of the most populated islands in the world. His hands are calloused from carpentry, but his feet are beautiful from walking village to village, bringing the good news. He first heard the gospel from an IMB missionary who shared with them about how to do FAITH gardening. It was a community development project funded by Send Relief. Faith stands for “food always in the home,” and he really appreciated knowing how to provide for his family, but the gospel transformed his life.
And for many years, he’s been going out in his province and sharing the gospel. Hundreds of people have come to faith in Christ, and he was in yet another area in his province. He had the name of a person he’d been asked to visit, and it was getting late in the day, and he was met by two men on the road, two robbers who went by the names of Tiger and Tattoo. Well, Tiger and Tattoo started pushing the little furniture maker around, and his Bible fell out of his bag. They said, “What’s that?”
“Well, that’s my Bible.”
“Well, where are you going?” He gave him the name of the person he was looking for, and they looked at that name and said, “Well, we know him. You better come with us. It’s not safe on these roads at night. So they escorted Paxi to the home of the person he was looking for. And you know, those two men came in to hear what he had to say. And that night, Tiger and Tattoo gave their lives to Christ, as well. So when you get to heaven, you have to look in the Lamb’s Book of Life for two very unlikely names: Tiger and Tattoo.
Carl Henry said, “The gospel is only good news if it gets there on time.” It got there on time for Tiger and Tattoo.
So we’ve seen who that the great multitude is. Now let’s ask: Where are they standing? Where is this vision taking place? Well, they’re standing before the throne. This is where people from every nation, tribe, people, and language will stand one day. All those who have believed in Christ, those early believers knew that this world was not their home, and as they suffered persecution, they longed for that place. What is it they were longing for? If we look a little bit farther down in our passage in chapter seven, verses 16 and 17, we get just a little peek, another peak of glory, as John reveals a little bit more of what heaven will be like, and it says this: “They will hunger no longer, nor thirst any more, nor will the sun beat down on them, nor any heat, for the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away tears from their eyes.”
Those suffering under persecution today long for that place still, and for those who have yet to hear, we join the great pursuit, getting the gospel to them, so that one day they will join us at that throne room, like the Dal people. Josh and Mika were tasked with reaching the Dal people, they looked for them. They asked churches to pray for the Dal people, pray that we would find the Dal people. Church groups had come, volunteer teams had come, and gone with Josh to look for the Dal people. They couldn’t find them. He was ready to give up, and then someone said, “Well, have you Googled them?” So he Googled them. He found another place where they might live, and so he and his national partner packed up the truck one day. They got a little bit of a late start. They got lost. They got bad directions. I know none of you missionaries have experienced that. They wind up in a in a field, the middle of nowhere, at the end of the day, frustrated, and out of the blue, a man comes running up to them and says “Jimasiki, which means “Praise the Lord,” in the local language. So he’s sharing his testimony with them, and they were just glad to see a believer. They were glad to see somebody. They said, “Brother, do you know any Dal people?”
“I know whole villages of Dal people, come, come with me,” and they took them that day to a Dal village, and they began to share the gospel for the first time among the Dal people. And you know, within the next couple of weeks, they found 15 new believers among the Dal people, all who had come to faith in Christ since Josh and Mika asked the churches to begin praying for the Dal people, they didn’t know that when the church started praying, God started working, and then they got to see the fruit of those prayers later. The first church has been planted now among the Dal people, and the second one is on the way. So now the Dal people will be counted among those who will be at the throne on that day.
Next, we must ask, why is the throne room open to us? Well, if you grew up in church, you probably learned this verse first, John 3:16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life with His blood.” Christ purchased men and women, boys and girls. He paid the ransom to set us free. The great Shepherd left the 99 to search for the one, for you and for me. Why? Because he loves us. Because he alone is worthy to open that door and invite us in.
About a year ago, Steve met a young warrior in Africa who didn’t know anything about this loving God and the forgiveness that he could find in Christ. In fact, he was a man who was greatly feared in his community for raiding and pillaging and violence. Steve had been pouring into local leaders, helping them begin to pastor local churches and transform lives in the villages where they were serving. One day, while he was discipling a couple of these new leaders. This man walked in, didn’t say a word. Now, what was his plan? Drive Steve away. He didn’t want Steve Meadow around in his area. This missionary, this outsider. He sat and listened. That day, Steve was sharing the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. When the lesson was done, he got up and left. Steve said, “The next week he came back.”
He came in, and he told Steve his story. He said, “Last week when you were sharing that story of the Pharisee and the tax collector, God just pierced my heart, and I realized that all of the sin that I had in my life. That I had hurt people, stolen from people, terrorized people. I realized that that sin could be forgiven by this God, and I chose to follow Him. When I went home, I asked Jesus to forgive me and make me a new person.” He came back the next week and started learning Bible stories, started sharing those stories. He started going out to those villages that he used to terrorize and ask forgiveness, and now he’s in training to be a pastor, to lead others to know Christ in his community.
Well, Steve and his wife continue on in in their work, doing lots of really good work across this part of Africa. In just a four-week period, over 1000 people saw the Jesus film. 400 professed faith in Christ. They also run a weekly medical and malnutrition clinic where they see about 50 patients during that week, and every one of them gets the gospel. Another Send Relief project that they work together with Send Relief to get the gospel out to these people. And Steve said this season has been full of transformation, discipleship, and God’s unmistakable grace. And now, a warrior who once brought fear and trepidation is a warrior for Christ, bringing the good news of Christ back to those same villages.
Finally, we need to ask ourselves: How is any of this even possible? After all, Paul reminds us in Ephesians two one to three of our sinful condition. Verse one: “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, among them, we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest, so we all we all bear the curse of Adam.”
We’re all dead in our sins. So how do we get to wear those white robes? This may be the most important question. How can sinners stand before a holy God? How can people from every nation, tribe, people, and language stand with white robes before the throne. Well, let’s look in verse 14. They washed their robes and made them white. How? In the blood of the Lamb. We’re not saved by good works. We’re not saved by religious rituals. We’re not saved by going to church, we’re not saved by being born into a Christian family. We’re not saved by trying to live a good and moral life. I’ve seen people performing all sorts of self-righteous rituals around the world, trying appease whatever God they’re seeking to worship. But the path to the throne room is a narrow path, and it leads to the cross of Christ and His shed blood. He took off our stinking, ragged, gray clothes, and He replaced them with white robes, white robes that have been dipped in the blood of the Lamb. He is Lord, and one day, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is King. Every tongue that is has cursed His name will one day confess that He is Lord.
Friends, a great harvest is coming. We see a glimpse of that future reality in Revelation seven, nine and 10, and Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” Who will fill those shoes? The Boomer missionaries are retiring. Will the next generation step up and fill those missionary shoes to go to the nations? Pray with us that the Lord of the harvest would raise up more laborers for the harvest. Let me let me tell you a little secret about missionaries. They don’t float down out of heaven. They come from these chairs right here, and they stand up and say, “Here am I. Send me.”
When I was praying this morning, the Lord impressed me to pray for someone or some people in this room who came in here today with no inkling, no idea, no thought for the nations of ever going overseas, and one day they would be on the other side of the world, sharing the good news with lost people. And one day they would stand shoulder to shoulder before that throne, worshiping the King of Kings.
When I started this morning, I told you there were several pathways that you could go through to serve with the IMB, and a couple of years ago we started a pathway for high schoolers to go to the field. So if you’re a youth guy, a youth gal, and you’re raising up the next generation, consider taking your students on a Go Impact trip. These trips have been incredibly impactful, not only for the field but for those students and seeing lostness up close and personal.
There is the IMB residency program. I know Kevin would love to talk to you about that. What a great opportunity to go for a semester and see the world, get some experience working alongside IMB missionaries overseas. There’s the IMB journeyman program for those 21 to 30 years of age. You don’t have to be a college graduate anymore. We’ll take you if you want to take a break in your– Don’t do that. Finish your degree and come and serve as a journeyman with us. IMB Explorers, we have 300 set aside until 2030 for IMB Explorers to go and find those 3,000 unengaged, unreached people groups. Now, generally, we’re looking for 21 to 30 year olds, but we were asked not long ago by a 49-year-old woman if she could do this, because she said, “God has made me for this job.” We said, “Well, you have to pass the army fitness test.” Piece of cake. She was a marathoner. She’s serving overseas with us, looking for those UUPGs out there.
Of course, the linchpin position for us is that career missionary who will go and learn the language, get into the culture, and begin to plant churches. But there are other full-time missionary roles where you can use your profession, and it may be in a support role like member auditing or logistics, some type of business services role, but there are also opportunities for those who work in strategic access using your skills in engineering, or in business, medicine, health-related fields, sports, veterinarians, aqua-culturalists. All types of opportunities abound for you to use your skills in in whatever area the Lord has gifted you
And then our fastest growing pathway–not our biggest, but our fastest growing–is the IMB Masters program. That’s the 55+ category for those Boomers who are retiring across the nation at 10,000 a day. We’re challenging them to use the first two to three years of retirement to serve as a Master’s missionary to go and serve among the nations. Maybe they bring their skill set that they’ve gained for a lifetime, the education, the experience, the know-how, the maturity. Come and work alongside our missionaries. Could be in a support role. It could be in a full-time front-line position, and they’re coming. We pray more would come.
God could be calling you to join the great pursuit today. He could call your children or your grandchildren. If he does that, will you be their biggest supporter? Will you encourage them to follow God’s will for their lives? If we’re going to reach the nations, we have to do it together. For you, it might be in praying, or it might be in developing a global prayer strategy in your church. It might be in educating the next generation so that they understand God’s heart for the nations. We desperately need mission education among our young people and our churches again. Might be in equipping missionaries to go through teaching theology and missiology and musicology. It might be in giving above and beyond as a patron of the mission. Perhaps it’s in building a pipeline to send missionaries and church planters across America and across the world, and if that’s the case, we can help you do that.
Perhaps it’s in going yourself. So as you go through this week and you hear those missionaries talking, go talk to them, ask them what what’s it like. Tell me what your day’s like, and if God begins to move you, open your heart, just say yes. Say yes to the next step. Doesn’t mean we’re going to put you on a plane and send you overseas, but say yes to the next step. Be obedient for every step He leads you in, no matter where it takes, and you will be amazed where the Lord leads you by the end of your life.
I never would have imagined the life that He has given us, but it’s because we said yes to every step of obedience along the way. So say yes, and all of us working together, we can reach the nations. And every generation has to take up this commission. And now it’s time for the next generation to step up and do it.
Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for these young people who are here to prepare themselves for a lifetime of work and ministry, whether it’s as s full time minister or in a church or in some other type of ministry role, Lord, I thank you for them, and I pray that these years would be rich years of preparation, that they would put down some roots here at Southwestern and really dig in and be equipped and be challenged and be transformed into the disciple-making person that you want them to be. I thank you for the staff and the faculty here who pour their lives out every day for the sake of these students who come wanting to be equipped, I pray that you would bless them, Lord. Give them joy in the work that you call them to on a daily basis. And Lord, we thank you that one day we will stand before that throne with a vast multitude that no one could count. Praise Jesus, Amen.
