Rev. David Holwick A
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
January 7, 1996
Matthew 28:18-20
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I. Missions is on the fringe.
A. Interest in missions enhanced at Christian college and seminary.
1) Missionary name board at Wheaton.
B. Martinson family drops out of missions.
1) Lack of support for family from churches.
2) "Out of sight, out of mind."
C. A great sin for us, though we barely notice it.
II. Mission important to Jesus.
A. Parable about missions. Luke 12:16-24
1) Go to farthest reaches and make them come in.
2) "Unreached people."
a) Out of 5 billion people on planet, 3.5 billion do not
live in a culture that has a strong Christian witness.
b) As Bosnia shows, cultures can live side by side and
still have no meaningful contact.
c) Hidden People won't come to us. We have to go to them.
3) God wants a worldwide community.
4) Jesus cannot come back till we reach the world. Matt 24:14
B. Great commission. Matt 28:19-20
1) Last words of dying people have special meaning.
a) They are usually long remembered by those who love them.
b) Jesus is not dying, but leaving earth.
2) Four important commands in verse.
a) "Go."
b) "Make disciples."
c) "Baptize."
d) "Teach obedience to Jesus' teachings."
III. Mission is always resisted.
A. Arguments against mission.
1) Missionaries are imposing Western thoughts on people.
2) They are old-fashioned, narrow, and intolerant.
3) Resistance is nothing new - earliest Christians also
neglected missions. Acts 1:8; 8:1f
4) And first Baptists were also anti-missionary.
B. Resistance for Adoniram Judson.
In the early 1800's the Church was not very concerned about
missions.
Christians even thought it was sinful to want to evangelize
foreign lands.
It took a young man to turn things around in the United States,
Adoniram Judson.
Adoniram's father was a strict Congregational pastor and he
wanted his son to follow in his steps.
Instead, Adoniram went to school and lost the faith.
He told his father the Bible was a bunch of fairy tales and
religion was a racket.
In his heart, though, he was in great turmoil and finally he
achieved peace by accepting Christ as his Savior.
What is more, he was determined to share it with those who
had never heard the gospel.
Adoniram Judson and his wife Nancy raised money and sailed for
India.
Judson began the voyage as a Congregationalist but arrived as
a Baptist because of an intense Bible study.
India was controlled by the British East India Company, and they
did everything they could to expel missionaries.
They knew the gospel would get the natives thinking about
freedom and justice, and they didn't want any of that.
So in 1813 the Judsons arrived in Burma.
When they got off the boat in Burma, they built a church and
preached the gospel.
Nothing happened.
Adoniram translated the Bible into Burmese.
Still no one was saved.
It took 5 years before he baptized a single convert.
After a lifetime of preaching and translating the Bible, 2 years
on death row in a Burmese prison, the death of three wives
and 7 children, Judson had only a few dozen converts from
the Burmese. #3446
C. Great fruit of the mission movement.
1) Before time of Judson, Christianity was pretty much limited
to Europe and America.
2) Now it can be found on every continent.
a) Baptists first arrived in Russia in 1860.
They pushed carts full of Bibles from town to town and
were arrested every time they preached.
Today Russia has close to one million Evangelicals and
40 million Russian Orthodox Christians.
b) Many of our missionaries today work in Zaire, Africa.
200 years ago there were almost no Christians there.
In 15 years this continent may have 300 million.
c) The church in China is less than 100 years old.
At one time 4,000 missionaries served there, till all
were kicked out by Mao Zedong in 1950.
Two million Chinese Christians were left behind, but
every single church was closed.
Many westerners assumed the church had been wiped out.
They were wrong.
After years of severe persecution, there are now
10 million and growing.
3) American Baptists have a great heritage of mission, and
have a far-reaching philosophy - let locals do it.
IV. Resistance in Ledgewood.
A. Hard for us to focus on anything beyond our church.
1) "Why go overseas?"
2) No financial commitment to missions, just whatever comes in.
3) A few pro-mission people but mostly apathy.
B. Much fault due to me.
1) Little contact with missionaries. (letters)
2) Must be better at promoting it.
C. We need a challenge.
1) Founder of seminary, Ockenga, challenged his church to step
out in faith, and millions of dollars were raised.
2) Young people need to feel the passion of serving Jesus.
D. Do we really believe in the value of the gospel?
One of the most poignant missionary stories is about Bill Borden.
Are you familiar with condensed milk and "Elsie the cow"?
Borden's family began the company.
Bill's father was active in real estate after the great Chicago
fire, and it was from this, not milk, that their fortune grew.
Borden's parents raised him in a mansion on Chicago's "Gold Coast"
within walking distance of Moody Church.
At the age of 25 he was worth $40 million in today's dollars.
Borden went to Yale and was president of the Phi Beta Kappa honor
society his senior year.
He was voted third out of 800 for being the hardest worker,
fourth for the most energetic, ninth as the most to be admired,
and seventh as the one who had done the most for Yale.
Bill's mother was devout and taught him the Bible.
Before entering college, at age 17, his parents sent him on a
10-month global tour.
He left San Francisco in September 1904, and when they reached
London they went to hear R.A. Torrey preach at a revival.
Torrey gave an invitation to those who had never publicly
indicated that they had surrendered all to Christ.
Bill stood up with several others and later wrote home,
"We sang the chorus: 'I surrender all, I surrender all.
All to Thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all."
Torrey gave five points for daily living, with the last being
"Go to work."
Borden decided to do just that.
Back in Yale, Borden founded and privately financed a mission
for down-and-out men.
One man later said Borden talked to everyone.
At Bible conferences he volunteered to wait on tables.
He had a devoted but simple prayer life, and was tempted to buy
a car but decided it was an unjustifiable luxury.
Unknown to his family, he gave his entire inheritance to missions.
At a college lecture he heard Samuel Zwemer describe the sweep
of Moslem influence throughout the Near and Far East.
Zwemer said those 70 million people were not lost because they
had proved too fanatical or because they refused to listen,
but because "none of us has ever had the courage to go to
those lands and win them to Jesus Christ."
After graduating from Princeton Seminary, he left for service in
Egypt.
His mother wondered on the eve of his departure if he had done
the right thing in giving up everything he owned:
"I fell asleep asking myself again and again, 'Is it, after all,
worthwhile?'"
"I heard a voice was speaking in my heart, answering the question
with these words:
'God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son....'"
Soon after Bill Borden arrived in Cairo, he contracted cerebral
meningitis and died.
The news shocked the world.
Accounts of his life and death were written in many languages.
An editorial in a Richmond, Va., paper said, "His investment has
borne rich returns already.
There are thousands of talented and favored young men who will,
in the light of Borden's conception of investment values,
come to a new view of Christian service."
Among Bill's papers was a poem his mother had given him on his
17th birthday.
It summed up what he did and what he was:
Just as I am, young, strong and free,
To be the best that I can be
For truth and righteousness and Thee -
Lord of my life, I come.
Was it just a waste?
#1775
V. Our challenge.
A. Support missionaries: pray, write, give.
1) Pray for them.
2) Write to them and encourage them.
3) Give to them.
a) American Christians give 2.4% of income to foreign
missions. #919
b) Most of our church's mission money stays right here.
c) Every family should support a missionary on monthly basis.
B. Be a missionary: go.
1) Send ourselves and our children.
2) By 1994 more than 30,000 missionaries will retire.
3) Only about 4,000 will step into their shoes.
C. (Commitment invitation)
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