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Sacramento Central SDA Church

Biblical Missionaries

Chris Buttery

The Missionary Nature of God

And I trust you've got your lesson, you've got your Bibles with you.

Just keep this in mind because, you know, and this is gonna be an excellent quarter.

We're talking about biblical missionaries.

And this year, our theme at Sacramento Central Church is each 1 reach 1.

See you know it so well look at that each 1 reach 1 and it just fits right in the lesson study fits right in with that theme it's the heartbeat isn't it of the church missionary work and reaching others with the good news of Jesus' offer of salvation.

And keep in mind, as we're studying together this quarter, that on the 13th Sabbath, which will be the last Sabbath in 3 months, there'll be a 13th Sabbath offering collected.

We're a global church, a missionary church, and every 13th Sabbath, of course, we pull together some funds and resources and it goes to specific projects that are listed on the back of your Sabbath School study guide.

And this particular quarter, send your prayers and save your money for the 13th Sabbath offering because your dollars and your prayers are going toward the Southern Asia Pacific division.

And that covers multiple different countries from Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, and of course, the Philippines.

We just heard a little bit about some work in the Philippines and what a blessing.

And so let's remember the work in the Southern Asia Pacific, it's a very important work and come the 13th Sabbath we'll be collecting a special offering for the work happening in that particular division.

You can read all about it on the back of your quarterly.

Well let's go right into our study here together and talk about the missionary character or the missionary nature of God.

Our memory text is Isaiah chapter 55 and verse 4 and it says, indeed I've given Him as a witness to the people, a leader and a commander for the people.

God has established His people as His witnesses and He wants them to reflect Him in their lives, sharing Him with others.

Mission simply means a sending or being sent to perform a service.

That's what it means, sending or being sent to perform a service.

In Matthew chapter 28 verses 19 and 20, Jesus, the resurrected Jesus, the 1 whom was worthy and is worthy of his disciples' worship, commissions his believers, his followers, his disciples, to go into all the world and do what?

Preach the gospel and in doing so, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost.

And Jesus said that I'm gonna be with you what?

Jesus promises to be with us through the mighty third person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit.

Jesus, this infantile church, there in the first century, Jesus says, I want you to go to the entire world.

And probably they looked around a little bit and said, how are the few of us existing here right now going to do this and accomplish this task?

And Jesus said, I want you to go back to Jerusalem, you're gonna wait there, the promise of my Father will come, and there's certain conditions you'll need to meet to receive that, the outpouring of the power of heaven, the Holy Spirit, but when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you'll be my witnesses, not only here in Jerusalem, he said, but to Samaria and to every part of the globe.

And so God, Jesus, had given his mission to his early church.

It's not too difficult to connect Matthew 28 to the mission described in Revelation 14, verses 6 through 12.

Do you remember in Revelation 14 verse 6, John said he saw another angel flying where?

In the midst of heaven having the everlasting gospel to preach to them that dwell where?

Down just a couple of streets here in the city of Sacramento?

Jesus said in Matthew 24, when this gospel of the kingdom is preached in all the world for witness to all nations, then what will happen?

And so the church has its mission and Revelation 14 we could say is the message, the last day message given to the church to prepare a world for the imminent return of Jesus Christ.

This message needs to go to the entire world.

Essentially, the mission is to share the good news of God's saving grace, His death, His resurrection, and His imminent return with those who don't know or haven't received it.

Now, I pulled some more statistics here with regard to Christianity in general and their efforts, Christianity in general, which includes the Seventh-day Adventist Church and their mission, the evangelization of the world, their missionary endeavors in the world.

And so here are just a few things, it's interesting information.

In the un-evangelized world, that is in some countries where there is no public evangelism, public effort, There are certain countries where proselytization is prohibited and could mean your life if you were caught doing so.

And so in some places where there is no public evangelism, there are about 20, 500 full-time Christian workers and about 10, 200 foreign missions, or missionaries rather.

In the evangelized non-Christian world, where there are countries that may be predominantly Buddhist or Hindu or Muslim perhaps, so in those evangelized non-Christian countries there are about 1.3 million full-time Christian workers.

And in the Christian world there are about 3, over 300, 000 foreign missionaries to other lands, also 4.19 million full-time Christian workers, that's 95 percent of Christian workers work within Christian countries.

95 percent of Christian workers work in Christian countries.

Now, that's not to suggest that Christian countries aren't in need of missionaries or mission endeavors of the Church.

Some Western countries are post-Christian, aren't they?

I hail from a country that is post-Christian.

Australia has become and has become a very secular nation.

And so certainly there is work to be done in these countries as well.

Bible distribution, about 78 and a half million Bibles are distributed globally per year.

And then the number of Christian books in print, there are approximately 6000000 books about Christianity in print today.

And then a sad statistic, there are a number of Christian martyrs annually, the average is about 160, 000 martyrs per year.

You don't hear about that in the daily news, do you?

Don't hear about Christians who are sharing their faith and for sharing their faith they lose their lives.

It's a sad reality, but it is a reality nonetheless.

We have it pretty good right here in the United States, don't we?

There are some countries that you're viewing from where you have it good as well, but some places, some countries, mission and missionary work is very difficult.

Now, when individuals talk about mission and they scale back, they begin a timeline of Christian missionary activity, they often start with the Apostle Paul.

But missionary activity among God's people didn't begin with the Apostle Paul.

Well, you can go back to Jesus, couldn't you?

But it would even occur before that, wouldn't it?

Did God raise up a people in the Old Testament period that were to evangelize the world?

Sure, but you'd even have to go back further than that.

When we're talking about a timeline of Christian mission, we have to go back.

Ultimately, the Christian mission is God's mission.

It's God's mission, it's not yours and mine, we don't own it, it didn't start with us, we are a part of, and what we do is a part of God's mission.

It began in the heart of God and it was based on the love of God, for it was the love of God that sent His Son to a dying world, and of course it will be accomplished by the will and the power of God.

What God has started, what He's set in operation, will be accomplished.

Now, that doesn't mean everyone, unfortunately, is going to accept the saving grace of Jesus, but the mission of the Church, spurred on by the love of God, is to accomplish the work of sharing the Gospel, inviting people to a saving relationship with Jesus, in the hopes that many, in the hopes that some will accept that precious offer.

So this quarter's lesson, this quarter's lesson is based on a particular model of salvation and we're gonna talk about that a little bit here today and review this particular week and it'll come up throughout the quarter, this particular model of salvation history.

Number 1, God created men and women and He gave them free will, that's the first point.

God is the 1 who created men and women and He gave them free will.

God is the 1 who created men and women and He gave us the freedom to choose free will.

Number 2, our first parents abused their free will by disobeying God and they had to leave the Garden of Eden, paradise.

So they were expelled from the Garden of Eden.

Number 3, God could not use force to bring them back to paradise.

He didn't say, well, okay, you've sinned, I'm gonna shut the gates, you guys stay in there, and I'm gonna force you to do what is right now.

And number 4, because He couldn't force us, He sent His Son instead, on a mission, to die in humanity's place, in an effort to reconcile humanity to God.

And then number 5, God's mission is to make the offer of salvation known to all people and thus open the way to have them, or have them receive redemption, open the way for them to have redemption.

The author of the lesson says, at its basic level, mission is letting the whole world know about Jesus and what He has done for each of us and what He has promised for us, now and for eternity.

In short, He goes on to say, we who know about these promises have been called to do what?

So let's talk about this week and let's review this week's lesson with regard to this salvation model that we'll be talking from throughout this quarter and is really the basis of why there is mission, why there is missionary activity.

Abraham: The First Missionary

If you don't have the Sabbath School Quarterly or the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, go to our website and click on the CSH banner and you'll be able to download the actual lesson study right there off of our website.

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And so, we're launching right into our second lesson for the new quarter's study on biblical missionaries.

Hope you've got your Bibles open and you've got your lesson studies as well available.

We're going to be talking about the first great, or the first missionary.

And his name is Abraham, that's right, Abraham is the great missionary, or that first missionary.

Last week's lesson we talked about and looked at how God's heart is a missionary heart.

And the only reason and the need for mission is to salvage and save that which is lost, to find that which is lost.

And so God's heart of love reached out, sent His Son, came, lived, suffered, and died, rose again so that you and I might be saved.

And so, let's, we're going to track throughout this quarter the different missionaries that the Scriptures highlight and hopefully we can learn a few things as we navigate our way through these stories and enjoy them.

This morning, of course, we're talking about Abraham.

Let's take a look at our Memory Texas, Galatians chapter 3, verses 6 through 8.

I'll be reading from the New King James Version, and it says, Just as Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness.

Therefore, know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham and the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand saying, in you all the nations shall be blessed.

We may be, as some of you may be familiar with the British explorer Sir Francis Drake, who sailed from England in December of 1577 with 6 ships and 164 sailors.

His mission was simply to be the first Englishman to circumnavigate the entire globe.

And 3 years later, with just 1 ship and 59 surviving sailors, he limped into Plymouth Harbour.

While ultimately successful in his mission and their mission, Sir Francis and his men had endured a litany of horrors.

They'd endured storms, they'd endured shipwrecks, attacks by hostile peoples, and they also endured starvation.

When you go on a mission, it's not always easy, it's not always easy, in fact, it's often very difficult, as was the case with Sir Francis Drake.

When we think about great men of old, for example, like Enoch and Noah, and whom God had called on a mission for Him.

Now they didn't go as missionaries per se and leave the area where they were living, but they were on a mission for God.

Enoch, we're told, and Jude, proclaimed and preached the return of Christ.

And Noah, of course, we know what his message was, repent and get on the boat, a storm, a flood is coming.

And certainly, it wouldn't have been easy for them.

All we need to do is go to Genesis chapter 6 verse 5 and the Bible records that the thoughts and intents of the people's hearts was evil continually and we know only 8 people got on Noah's ark and so we know that his mission was successful in saving 8, but not successful in saving all.

He endured difficulties and trials and challenges or so, and it wouldn't have been easy, but these individuals were faithful in their responsibility.

The dictionary defines a missionary as a person on a religious mission to a foreign country.

That's what missionary means, and it's interesting, the dictionary highlights the endeavors of Christianity in particular.

And so, a missionary is a person sent on a religious mission to a foreign country.

The Manila Adventist Medical Center Church Choir is on a mission this summer.

You're here visiting and traveling around and sharing the gospel and song and be singing over at the General Conference coming up here very shortly.

Going on a mission, leaving what you're used to and what you're familiar with to share the gospel in foreign lands.

And the first true missionary, because he left his homeland at the request of God, was Abraham, the first recorded missionary.

Through that first call to leave his native home, God had promised that through him a knowledge of salvation, justification by faith, would come to all nations, and Abraham was to witness to those of another land about the true God.

So God had sent Abraham on a mission and to share the good news of salvation.

So we're gonna go over to Sunday's lesson.

Let's go to Genesis chapter 12 in our Bibles.

Genesis chapter 12, let's take a look here at the story of Abraham.

Actually, the story of Abraham begins in Genesis chapter 11.

We normally pick it up in chapter 12 verses 1 to 3 where God asks Abraham to leave his home country and through Abraham God would bless him as he would be a blessing to the nations.

But Abraham is first mentioned in Genesis chapter 11 and you can read the story in verses 26 to 32.

And in Genesis 11, 26 to 32, Abraham is introduced to us for the first time as Abram.

He doesn't get a name change until Genesis 17 and verse 5.

Abraham's original name was Abram and Abram means father of elevation or exalted father, that's what Abram means, which was a name that pointed to his honoured position as an ancestor of Shem.

And Shem was a part of that unbroken line of faithful men, starting with Adam and his son, Seth, and then of course we move to Enoch and Methuselah and Noah, etc.

And so these men served God, and through that lineage of Seth, we come to the story of Abram.

And so just turn with me to chapter 12, if you're there, we'll look at verses 1 through 3.

Now the Lord had said to Abram, "'Get out of your country, from your family, "'and from your father's house, "'to a land that I will show you.

"'I will bless you and make your name great, "'and you shall be a blessing.

"'I will bless those who bless you, "'and I'll curse him who curses you, and in you all the families of the earth shall be what?

God said, okay, you need to leave and I'm going to bless you and you're going to be a blessing to the nations, you see.

And so, Abraham grew up in the Ur of the Chaldees, or the Ur of the Chaldees, and that is, of course, in Iraq, what we know as Iraq today, and Ur was northeast of the Persian Gulf.

If you just run up from the Persian Gulf and go a little bit northeast, you'd run into Ur of the Chaldees.

And it was a hotbed of superstition and heathenism.

Sadly, Abraham's own family had succumbed to the surrounding culture by serving other gods, and you can read that in Joshua chapter 24 and verse 2, where writing there in that book, Abraham's family is said to have left and served other gods.

So in order to preserve the truth about himself, God called Abram or Abraham, along with his household, out of Mesopotamia.

When you read here in chapter 11, the last part of chapter 11, and you get to chapter 12, and you read verse 4, it seems as though God had called Abraham out of Haran.

That's where this call, this message from God came to Abraham from.

But in fact, he was first called from Mesopotamia.

And here's just a couple of references if you wanted to make a note, Genesis 15, 7, Nehemiah 9, 7, and then if you go to the book of Acts, chapter 7, verses 2 and 3, God came to Abraham and said similar words to what we find in Genesis 12, 1 through 3, and called him out of Mesopotamia.

And so he left Mesopotamia with his household, and then in their journey with the family, they traveled about 500 plus miles northeast from Ur, out of Ur, to Haran and there, sadly, Abraham's father, Terah, passed away.

And so, they're in Mesopotamia, in Ur, and God calls Abraham out, he and his family.

They travel to Haran, about 500 miles northeast, and in Haran, Abraham's father Terah dies.

And he dies not having made it to the Promised Land.

They were all on the way to the Promised Land.

But even more serious, even more serious was the fact that Abraham's brother Nahor and his family decided not to continue the journey when God came to Abraham the second time, which is recorded in Genesis 12, and told him to get up out of this place and leave Haran and go to a place that I will show you.

It's a sad testament, but Nahor decided to not claim the promise of God, not journey to the promised land, and so Abraham left his brother and his family behind.

It was under these conditions, under these circumstances, that Abraham obeyed the call of God.

Someone has for me here this morning Hebrews chapter 11, verses 8 through 10.

Okay, Richard's got that, we'll get a mic.

We'll get it to you in just a moment and we'll come right over to you.

So turn with me in your Bibles to Hebrews 11, verses 8 through 10, and as we're just about getting ready to get over there, just wanna draw our attention to that fact again.

God said, Abraham, leave, come out, leave your family, come and travel, and come with, I wanna take you to a land that I want to show you, I'm going to take you to the promised land, a place where you'll be a blessing to others.

And then, when he's getting ready to leave, Nahor decides not to come, not to follow.

Is it possible that some are on the journey today on the way to the promised land, and then they drop off halfway through the journey?

Is it possible that some folk who started out so well, journeying toward the promised land, might not end up making it?

There are certain things that arise that prevent people from continuing on, maybe the hardship of the journey that Nahor considered, maybe he enjoyed it in Haran and said, this is the best place I'm going to find, you can keep on going Abraham.

Is it possible that some people have the same attitude toward heaven and eternity and they start out so well but drop off on the way.

It's a sad testament but these are the conditions that Abraham obeyed the call of God.

Let's read Hebrews chapter 11 verses 8 through 10.

Hebrews 11 8 to 10, by faith Abraham when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive foreign inheritance, obeyed, and he went out, not knowing where he went.

By faith he traveled in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.

For he looked for a city which had foundations, whose builder and maker is God." Thank you very much.

What was so remarkable about Abraham's decision to obey the call of God?

The Unlikely Missionary

Well, we're going to go right into our lesson here this morning.

And today and this week we've been reading and studying about the unlikely missionary.

And the story that we're going to be following here is found in 2 Kings chapter 5, and so turn in your Bibles to 2 Kings chapter 5 if you'd be so kind.

And we're going to spend quite a bit of time here, and of course, as we do every lesson, we're gonna go around the Scriptures, learn a few other things along the way.

A memory text is found in Luke chapter 4, verse 27, and I'll be reading from the New King James Version.

It says, And many lepers were in Israel in the times of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.

And so we're going to be talking about Naaman and his healing and just all that took place there.

Just to set the stage a little bit, if you're not too familiar with the times, the Book of Kings was the record which records the history of the Kingdom of Israel from about 970 BC to about 550 BC.

It parallels 1 of the most interesting periods in the ancient Near Eastern history.

This was a time when Assyria was rising or had risen to power and its kings went out to conquer the then known world, which included, by the way, Israel and also Judah.

And this was for the time, this was at the same time of the 21st and the 20th through to the 26th dynasty of Egyptian pharaohs.

And of course they were still vying for control, not only of Syria, but also of Israel.

And this was also the time that the Neo-Babylonian Empire rose to power and when they, the Chaldeans and the Medes, defeated the Assyrian army and brought much of that area under their sway.

And so this is the political climate that we we find when we come to this particular story.

During this same time the story of 2 prominent prophets emerges and those prophets are Elijah and Elisha.

If you have a hard time trying to figure out who's Elijah and Elisha, here's just an easy way to remember.

And see, I'm trying to help you, and I'm trying to help myself, you see.

And so Elisha and Elijah were the prophets, couple of the main prophets, prominent prophets that we read about in the book of Kings.

And in the ministry and the life of Elisha, we see also a lot of similarities between his ministry, his life, and the ministry and life of Jesus.

In 1 Kings chapter 4, Elisha's servant asks him, how are we going to feed 100 people with this small portion of food?

And Elisha says, just go ahead and put it before them.

Essentially, the Lord's going to provide.

So Elisha, fed by the miracle working power of God, fed small portions of food to large companies.

Lepers were healed under the ministry of Elisha and of course the dead was raised as well.

And this particular lesson here today, we're going to be focusing on 1 of those stories of a cleansed and healed leper.

And that's the story of a very wealthy, a very powerful army captain who was healed of leprosy.

He was healed because of the witness of an unlikely missionary.

Let's just take it day by day as we normally do.

He had it all but 2 Kings chapter 5, and we're over here in verse 1.

Now it's 1 thing to be an unlikely missionary because of your past life and you may have read about the missionary stories of Anne and Adoniram Judson of the early 19th century.

He was a cynical actor who had rejected the faith of his father and his wife, Anne, she was the town belle or the town beauty and she was indulged by her parents.

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