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Sacramento Central SDA Church

Biblical Missionaries

Chris Buttery

The Missionary Nature of God

Abraham: The First Missionary

The Unlikely Missionary

The Jonah Saga

Exiles As Missionaries

Peter and the Gentiles

Background and Call

Paul: Mission & Message

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.

Series

Biblical Missionaries

The Missionary Nature of God

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Out of the Dark Ages: Escaping Righteousness by Works

5. Glorifying God, But Not as God

40m

War of Thrones

Prophecy’s Signs of the Times

57m

Antichrist: The One You've Never Known

Antichrist, Episode 5: More

25m

Unlocking the Mysteries of the Sanctuary

20 The Judgment Continued Phase 2

50m

The Moment

34m

Noah

01 The Days of Noah

38m

Restoration 2023

Translation or Transformation? The 2nd Coming

48m

The Exodus & God Almighty

The Great Deliverance

1h 7m

Keys of Revelation

16. The Day the Devil Dies

57m

Plenary Sessions

Final Charge: Will Your Anchor Hold?

1h 52m

A Season of Preparation

37m

Just a Drink of Water

43m

Sound Doctrine