Kick-Starting a Plan to Reach the World, Part 3

When the resurrected Lord appeared to his disciples in Galilee. He gave them their final marching order.

Jesus told them to go and make disciples of all the nations will sometimes we read those familiar words in Matthew 28 and assume that Jesus was speaking to evangelist missionary today on Insight for living Chuck Swindoll reminds us that the great commission of Jesus applies to us all and is explaining how this exciting role can be implemented in our spheres of influence today. Let's pick up the study.

Chuck called kickstarting a plan to reach the you are going to be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere. There versus wonderful in that it gives an outline of the book of acts, you will testify of me you will be my witnesses first in Jerusalem. That's where they were right here in the city. Start where you are great principle of evangelism you have to go to the mission field began to be an evangelist start right where you are. You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria ever been to a place in your travels you felt like you would reach the end of the world.

You said you felt like you could see it from there. I had a friend who went to the very very very base of the continent of Africa and he stood with his his feet getting wet on the on the waters is the washed up on the shores and he said I realized I'd never ever been so far from home. In all my life, and he wrote it was like being at the end of the earth. To him that would be there to someone else. It would be in the in the depth of a country that's jar or remote island whose name you can hardly pronounce the meaning the message everywhere. Everywhere.

Samaria would be the people that you would not normally have anything to do with or your parents wouldn't who taught you wrong because they taught you to be prejudiced or your friends who were racists and they pass that along and you imbibed it.

Maybe you realize God means business when he's touching you in an area of your own struggle. You got a deal with because when you have the heart of of of a true witness, nobody is out of bounds.

Nobody is a gutter trunk. Nobody is worthless or on the page of a black book, nobody is unforgivable. That's what you mean by the ends of the earth, you name it, and wherever God may lead.

However, he may open doors will bear you speak of him there.

You're involved with him there. You represent him. There were rather limited. Admittedly, you may not travel much but you have extensive part of your own world.

It includes that as well. That's what he means here when he says to the ends of the earth not watch closely you you you got the point. Now look at the event that would clarify the whole thing. Verse nine. After saying this to me it was over. No more instructions were asking questions and taking notes and and dialoguing. It's over and they're listening to him, and suddenly there can be read while they were watching. He was taken up and into a cloud and they could no longer see this is a great time for me to say this is not mere black print on white pages.

This is an event that was like changing to men in transition.

That's over the baton of apostleship. There's everyone had a baton. Everyone loving days in the relay is a standard that the time there looking up Don McMahon gave me a book several weeks ago entitled command-and-control is an insightful book on the development of the Titan missile take you back into the era of the early to mid 40s when the whole experimentation related to the atom and the atom bomb.

The splitting of the atom. The development of the bomb regardless of your convictional home care. I'm not about that. I'm talking about the book goes back there and then it led to a different system that was developed mainly under Ronald Reagan as these Titan missiles were sunk into massive holes in your are you aware that some of them stood 7 to 8 story in length in the ground covered over with a warhead on top nuclear war.

Intercontinental ballistic missiles is the story of those who built them service them and made their mistakes in the process as well as succeeded in other ways does something to you when you read the story of those powerful weapons that could wipe out a city and they were proliferating in our land to defend us from countries that had the men were proliferating there and it was this this Cold War standoff and I look back to my life in the 70s and 80s, and I remembered when we were in what we were doing and how little of this, I was aware of at least in detail and non-reading in detail about these mass messages.

It tells of one that lifts all it says it was like a seven story silver bullet with a roar so loud couldn't hear anything else and one of the writers said he was amazed when he saw it for the first time that there were those men who were willing to place themselves on the point of one of those rockets to go into space. We call them astronauts and he said as I started what state it was frightening as this soulless to lifted from the earth into the sky and stared until he said the tail of it was over Mexico sort on them and when I read this I thought simple man never seen the inside of a seminary. Never been to a serious Bible school in the life never ran with the sophisticated crowd. They just they just guys with the baton and the calling but take my message go in there staring naturally like you why I think what would they think well you know they thought much because there staring there.

What we call spellbound with them all along and now gone room will is much as you can be with omnipresent God and the promise of the Holy Spirit are hanging onto.

But look at what the Lord does verse 10 I love this is the screen to see him rising into heaven to white old man suddenly stood among the called men because they look like men. Angels manifest themselves in various ways they could be animals, they can be humans, they can be gigantic they can be small. They over whatever in this case there like man in this case they were wearing white robes and they have something to say to these stargazers. They say men of Galilee, why are you standing here staring Jesus has been taken from you into heaven, but someday he will return from heaven.

In the same way you saw him go look at that promise.

Just as you see them lift all he will come back.

We don't doubt the liftoff. Why would anyone doubt the coming back like you live in the light of it, in the hope of the point is you standing staring to the baton you have a calling. Remember, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria noticed the end of the earth witness for me. I pulled a John Stott's book on Axel my shelf and found these helpful words. There was something fundamentally anomalous. The word means different or irregular about their gazing up into the sky when they had been commissioned to go to the ends of the earth to follow. Stott listen to this. It was the earth not the sky, which was to be their preoccupation there calling was to be witnesses, not stargazers provisionally work to cultivate was not upwards in nostalgia to the heaven which had received Jesus but words in compassion to a lost world, which needed him is the same for Russ curiosity about heaven and its occupants speculation about prophecy and its fulfillment annexation with times and seasons. These are aberrations which distract us from our God-given mission to which I say Christ will come personally, visibly, gloriously, that we have been assured. Other details can wait. Meanwhile, we have work to do in the power of the spirit. Truer words were never spoken. Your problem, it's what I call that vacuous uncertainty know two weeks of the same of this is the Lord's day today I'm speaking no clue what Monday holes not not a person here can guarantee anyone else. What will occur on Tuesday morning or Thursday afternoon.

It's uncertain and some are so caught up in the worry of uncertainty. They forgotten the promise that when we take his message, he will honor it. He would use it. He will make it affected Oswald Chambers. It is, but my utmost for his highest right. Naturally, we are inclined to be so mathematical in calculating that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing. Certainty is the mark of the common sense. Life gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life would insightful comment to be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness. It should rather be an expression of restless expectation of love that living our lives on tiptoe, never knowing what the day will bring only knowing that God our sovereign God is in charge, opening doors, presenting us with glorious moments of opportunity when the door opens.

Watch closes and what it opens. We go through we speak we serve him faithfully. We make no further than grieving over the closed doors. We look for the open opportunities and they're all about us. Which brings me briefly now, to these three lessons I learned from what we have discovered today number one to embrace and uncertain future. God's promise must be remembered, members promise I am with you always.

I am with you always. He is with you on Monday. He is with you on Wednesday. He will be with you on Thursday afternoon. I am with you always delighted that promise uncertainty doesn't bother us. I have a Savior with me in Christ and and I go together through this journey, whatever it may bring is the second lesson men and effective plan.

The right people must be engaged, you are dead when you run an organization wrong person in the wrong place to mess up the whole outfit but you get the right people in the right seat on the right bus going in the right direction. It's fabulous. These were 11 right people who have been prepared as well as they could have been. And now they were left with the baton. The red one that really to implement an effective plan. The right people must be engaged now. The third, you would anticipate to reach an ever challenging world spirit led power must be involved. We dare not do it in the flesh, we face the future in the power of the spirit we build this church in the power of the spirit we face tomorrow in the power of the spirit, we represent the Savior in the power of the spirit.

By the way, the way you may feel strangely out of all this because you don't know Jesus. All this talk about Jesus and the transition when Jesus was there and when they left would be coming back here.

That's all gobbledygook because you don't know what it is to believe in danger like guided by your sins forgiven through the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's take care about you just sit tightly right there.

If you never trusted in Jesus one the world be waiting for if it's thinking the world is going to get better and then you will have a better opportunity don't go there on the authority of the Scriptures.

I can tell you it will only get worse times will only become more treacherous, more and more savages will fill this earth. If you want to know power and strength.

The ability to go on beyond our times.

You gotta go hand-in-hand with Christ, so just come to the Lord. Right now, in a simple prayer acknowledge that you haven't anything within yourself to impress him really nothing in your own strength could do that telling that you you truly need the Savior in your trust him now and then you get a hold of us that we might help you in the journey as you begin to walk is like no other walk you've ever started if you're a believer and not engaged in what we call the mission. The plan to reach the world you're missing it in your own environment your own world your own occupation. What a privilege it is to represent Christ to make him known from one date of the next, he will honor that and give you the power for. Thank you, dear father, for the hope there is through Christ and only through Christ.

Thank you for helping us see the vision of vision of the nation's being reached through Christ right to the ends of the earth. A vision that includes overcoming prejudices and racism so that no one is marked off as untouchable or unreachable. Help us to realize that you want to use this just as we are doing your work, just as you have planned encourages with this passionate word from your book. As we began our way across the bridge toward real living in the name of Jesus we pray, everybody said a man you're listening to the Bible teaching of Chuck Swindoll on Insight for living, Chuck titled today's message kickstarting a plan to reach the world. To learn more about the ministry of insight for living. Please visit us online@insightworld.org. We know many in our listening family are curious, but perhaps uncertain about this matter of following Jesus will the learn more about what it means to follow God. We invite you to check out our website. Just go to insight.org will be mentioned that web address again insight.org. If you're brand-new to this daily Bible teaching program. You probably wouldn't know that insight for living is made possible not to the sponsorship of a large church or religious institution, but through the voluntary financial gifts of those who wanted you to have access to Chuck's teaching, in that respect those who give to insight for living have a ministry all their own. You see when you give to this nonprofit ministry. You're the one who's touching a life with God's grace not only here at home all around the world. Your loyalty and faithful giving sometimes over the course of many years has allowed us to reach more people than we ever dreamed possible.

Chuck is remarkable to look back and realize that insight for living is been carried on AM and FM radio stations for more than 40 years will times of change since 1979 and today the program is offered through a variety of channels. That's right Dave insight for living started more than 40 years ago as a radio ministry long before the Internet and mobile phones came along today were using every digital platform imaginable and most of them are pretty unfamiliar to this preacher. I could tell you that a lot has changed in 40 years, but gratefully God's message of grace never changes. No matter what technology we use God accomplishes his purposes.

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People who crave it. This Christmas season. I'm asking you to step forward and help someone else unwrapped the priceless gift of God's grace would you do that please you can do it right now by giving generously to insight for living ministries when all of us meeting included invest financially in this version clause then together we become the fragrance of God's grace to those who desperately need his unconditional love. Let's do this together and let's do it today. Thanks so much, getting in touch and responding. Chuck Swindoll is easy to pick up method is best for you. First, you can always call us day or night listening in the United States dial 1-800-772-8880 or it might be quickest and most efficient to give it our secure website that insight.org/donate insight.org or once again, if you're listening in the United States.

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