In the pocket of a soldier during
the American Revolutionary War in the 1770s, they appeared for
the first time in the October 1776 issue of Gospel Magazine,
which was published in England. The words were written by Jehovah
the Bringer, who was a Congregationalist minister. He did not sign his
name to the poem, but simply bore the name Sir Vestris, later
though found to be, from the pen of Mr. Jehovah Brewer, a
Congregationalist minister in Sheffield. As far as we know,
the only words he ever wrote, which yet remain, but these were
enough, and his song to a tune of Dwayne Street, my favorite
song, Hail, Sovereign Lord. Hail, Sovereign Lord, let us
begin the scene to rescue you. Hell match, let's bring the eternal
grace that gave my soul a heart in grace. For thanks to God who rules the sky, I fall with hands
up lifted high. Besides the mention of his grace, to go out and see the lighting
flames. They blasted six fields just a night and harmed our darkness more than light. Sadly I ran that single risk
to cure without a hiding place. But not the eternal council and all my ill luck won't rest that man.
I felt the arrows of despair. I felt I had no hiding place.
And it left just this blurry mixture, cyanide's fiery mouth I breathed. with bounding faith, your lips
are not a hiding place. And all the heavenly voice of heaven and mercy came to form
a peace. And led me, your children, to faith, to Jesus Christ, my hiding place. have sunk the world to hell.
People exult in more than rank, and the bluffs pretend their hiding place. They fear more,
more mean sons that look will finally take on heaven's face. Their eyes shall see God's sovereign
grace, Let me invite your attention
to the book of Acts, chapter 13, the Acts of the Apostles, chapter
13. I very much appreciate the consideration
This Church has given to my family and to myself, to my ministry.
I appreciate your kindness and your friendship and the privilege
and the honor to be here with you today. In October of 1983, I was living on the island of St.
Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, and we held a
week of open-air meetings. that fall, and our speaker for
the occasion was Joseph Fevrier, pastor of First Baptist Church
of St. Lucia, another island to the
south of where we were at that time. During his week with us
on St. Thomas, Pastor Fevrier related
that he was pastor of a church of some two hundred members And
he was also having to attempt to pastor a number of other smaller
churches as well, because there were not enough preachers on
the island. And that he had a number of young
men in his church that desired to assist him, but they had no
theological training, a lot of desire, but no background. And
he knew not what to do, and so he made it a matter of prayer.
The Lord was pleased shortly afterward to open the door for
my family to move to St. Lucia, West Indies, and we began
a ministry that was to last for about four years on the island
of St. Lucia. During this time, the
Lord was pleased to raise up a school, a school of theology,
a school the primary purpose of which was to prepare men for
the gospel ministry. and a school which opened its
doors to also anybody else that wanted to attend class. We charged
no tuition. It was college-level curriculum,
curriculum lasting some three years, four nights a week, two
hours each night. And after some three years, we
graduated a good number of pupils. I'm happy to say that we had
a banquet just the weekend before I left, and almost all the pupils
that we had in our school—twenty of them the last year—but almost
all the pupils we had are now preachers or pastors of churches,
ladies or Sunday school teachers, and workers with youth. Our young
men now have all their equipment going through the villages of
the island and preaching in the open air, and it was a good ministry
of the Lord. raised a good ministry there
and was pleased to permit us to work with him there. For about two and a half years
on the same island, I pastored a church myself, a small church
in a little fishing village, remote from the mainstream of
civilization on the island. My family went down twice every
week on the Lord's Day and also on Wednesday and preached I set
with the pastor of the church under the condition that my pupils
could do most of the work, and they did a good bit of the work.
They would learn in the classroom. We would study together in the
classroom, and then on the weekends and in the middle of the week
going down to this village, and they would attempt to put into
practice what they learned in class. And one of my pupils is
now a pastor in the church, and another one is assisting him.
Then the Lord gave us a television ministry which lasted for two
years, a television program entitled We Preach Christ, because that's
all we intended to do. We found it a full-time occupation,
and we were at that time the only TV station on the island,
which meant that if you wanted to watch TV at 8.30 Sunday morning,
you had to watch me. I was the only thing on TV. And by general consensus there,
the strangest television program on the air, not only because
it was the only white preacher there, but because it was the
only TV program that did not dabble in politics at politics
time, and moral issues at other times, and everything else under
the sun, we had one purpose, and that was to preach the gospel.
The Lord blessed it. We provided free literature every
week. The Lord was pleased to bless
that, and after four years on the island, the Lord was pleased
to bring that ministry to a conclusion, having raised up a number of
men to continue the work which had been done there. And then
the Lord opened the door on the island of Tortola, a few hundred
miles to the north of where we were, and going back up to where
we had begun our ministry back in 1979 in the Virgin Islands.
The church there has been without a pastor for about three or four
years. And as far as I know, I don't know of a single Sovereign
Grace Baptist preacher in the Virgin Islands. And I know a
bunch of preachers there, but no consistent Sovereign Grace
Baptist preachers. This church has been without
a pastor now for some three years or so, and they desire to come
up and help them. And I would read under the condition
that if the Lord be pleased, if we'll have a school there
like the one we have in St. Lucia. Hopefully the Lord will
send us a number of young men and ladies that will study together
with us, and the Lord might be pleased from that to send out
some men that know the gospel, that love it and preach it. If
they love it, they must preach it. And we hope that a number
of men and women, through studying with us, might learn to love
the gospel and to be used of the Lord. So we come at your
prayers. We pray God be pleased to bless
that work. In Acts 13, and before we read, let us seek
the face of the Lord in prayer. Our most gracious and kind and
loving Heavenly Father, we have come apart from the cares of
this world and from these brief moments we have gathered here
in this house, and we would pray that You would
drive from our hearts that which would hinder us from close communion
with you. We pray that in our coming to
you in this form of worship together, that we might have no other form
or purpose than that we might worship and to adore and to love
and honor, exalt to the degree to which we are capable, your
Son, Jesus Christ. And we pray for the wherewithal
to do it in a manner that is accepting in your sight. And
we pray that in every aspect of our service this morning,
whether it be in the singing of these hymns and the one we
just learned, in the prayers we've offered, and in this collection
taken, and in this Christmas scripture that you might be pleased
to direct our hearts to worship. and that you might be pleased
with that which we come before you with. We pray that you bless
this exposition of scripture and the declaration of your gospel,
that you use this message to your glory, to the calling of
your elect, and to the evocation of your Zion. And our Father,
we pray that our hearts knit together in love and harmony,
might worship you in spirit and in truth. In the name of your
Son, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. I'm going to speak to you
today, if God be pleased, on the subject that is very dear
to my heart, and should be to the hearts of all of us. The
subject of gospel missions. It's a subject that everybody
knows about, but everybody seems to be quite ignorant of. That
being an opinion that is gathered by observing what people think
about gospel missions. I am convinced that Americans
will have a place in history as having been among the most
generous of people when it came to supporting missionaries. I
think the Lord has blessed Americans with good resources, and I think
Americans have been very generous with regard to supporting missionaries.
I'm also convinced that Americans are perhaps the most goable people
in the world when it comes to religious matters. And every
Tom, Dick, and Harry with a smooth voice gets on TV and makes an
appeal, and he can get rich on it. And missionaries can do the
same thing. And I'm convinced, as a missionary,
I'm convinced that there's nobody, no minister in the world, in
a better position to take advantage of the most people than a missionary.
particularly one that's 1,500 miles away from home, 2,000,
3,000, 4,000 miles away from home, and all you know about
him is what he sends home in a newsletter. And I think that this matter
of gospel missions is one we need to look at very carefully,
because I find the models we find in gospel missions today
usually do not conform to this given to us in God's Word. And there is an example given
here in God's Word. I think Acts 13 and 14, which
describe the first missionary journey of Paul the Apostle,
will give to us a perfect example, a perfect model for us to follow
with regards to gospel missions. So I've entitled this message,
A Model for Gospel Missions. And I'm going to deal primarily
with the first five verses in this thirteenth chapter, and
looking at the rest of the two chapters here following very
briefly. We're introduced to the gospel
missions by our Lord's commission in the book of Matthew and Mark
and in the book of Acts, chapter 1, verse 8. Our Lord said, Go
into all the world and preach the gospel. Baptize them and
teach them all things I've commanded you. This is the work of gospel
missions. Our Lord commissioned it. We
find in the Book of Acts a record of how the early church did that.
We find that in the first twelve chapters that this work of sending
forth the gospel was confined, for the most part, to the eastern
shores of the Mediterranean Sea. We find particularly there in
Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, the men going into Judea and
into Samaria, Philip going into Samaria. We find in Acts chapter
8 that at the persecution which came upon the Church at about
the time of the death of Stephen, that the people of the Church
were scattered abroad. And some in the Adioc, we're
told, in 11 verse 26, we're told, they were called Christians in
that city first. And we're introduced to the city of Antioch by coming
into that chapter 13, and here we read that they were in the
church that was at Antioch, this church in Antioch. There were
prophets and teachers in that church. These prophets were men
blessed of God with ecstatic utterances. God spoke to them
and they spoke to the people in a day before we had this Word
of God like we have it today. But God would speak through his
prophets, and they would stand and speak the word of God. And
then there were teachers, pastor-teachers, if you will, and these five men
comprised the eldership of this church in Antioch. What were
their names? Well, Barnabas was first. He
was a Levite from the isle of Sapphus. One of the first evangelists
to Antioch. And then we find that there was
a man by the name of Simeon who was called Niger. The name Niger
denotes one of dark complexion. He was evidently a dark-complected
Jew, living there in Antioch. And then there was one by the
name of Lucius of Cyrene, a man of North Africa. And there was
a man which had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch. denoting
the fact that Menaean's mother had evidently been a maid or
even a nurse there in the family of Herod in the palace, and perhaps
nursed these two boys, Menaean, her son, and Herod. He had been
brought up in the palace of Herod, but now he's in the Church of
Christ. And then this one named Saul, Barnabas had brought Saul
to Antioch to assist him shortly after Saul's conversion. So these
five men were there in Antioch, the elders of this church, and
the Bible says in verse 22 that they were ministering to the
Lord and fasting. And while this was going on,
there are ministries there, some new aspect of gospel missions
began right here in Antioch. Here we find for the first time
men being set apart for the work of going forth by the recommendation
of a gospel church to do the work of gospel missions. Here
it starts, right here in chapter 13. And it is for that reason,
I think, that if we desire a model and an example to follow with
regard to gospel missions, no better place can be found than
here in Acts chapter 13, the first five verses. Look at it
carefully. Two things I want you to note this morning concerning
gospel missions. We want to find out who is the
author and the director of gospel missions. Is it a church, is
it a nomination, a mission board? What is it? Who is it? Number
two, what is the work of a gospel missionary? What is the work
of a missionary? Look at it carefully. All right,
point number one, who is the author and the director of gospel
missions? The Bible says, in verse 2, that
as they ministered to the Lord in faith, the Holy Spirit said,
Separate me, Barnabas, and Saul from the work wherein I have
called them. Watch carefully. Who began this
work? The Spirit of God. My friends,
I'm going to tell you that the author and the director of gospel
missions is no one and nothing else than the Holy Spirit alone.
It's him. It's his work. It's God's work. The responsibility
for sin that the gospel goes forth for all of God's elect
is God's responsibility. And God has here stepped on the
scene in Acts chapter 13, and he says, I'm ready now to send
some men out as missionaries going forth with this work of
declaring the gospel. And God said, it's my work, it's
my vineyard, it's my husbandry, and I will have to do my work
for whom I will have to do it. And of you five men, I choose
that one and that one, Barnabas and Saul. And he called them
by name. He said, I'll have that one and I'll have that one. Now
you send them forth. You recommend them to this work. I'll call
them forth and I'll direct them. You just put your hand on them,
recommend them, identify with them, but it's my work and I'll
call them forth. I think the first thing we must
realize is that these men did not call themselves. No denomination
sent them. They were not called by a missions
board. They were not called by some religious organization.
They were called of God. They didn't choose themselves
even for it. When I was in Bible college, it had come to the final
term of my final year Coming down to the close of the final
year, a bunch of us were sitting at a table one day in the student
center, and we were discussing what we would do when school
was out. It was a Bible college, and so we all figured the Lord
had a ministry for us. One young man said that the church
had called him to be pastor, and so when school was out he
was going to go pastor a church. Another man said, well, I have
a degree. now, and some churches call me to be a minister of music,
and so I'm going to go when school's out to be a minister of music."
Now, the man was getting his degree in a religious education,
and so he said, when school's out, I'm going to go be a teacher
in a Christian school, and other people are going to be a minister
of youth. You know the names we get preachers nowadays, and all
these fellows, you know, saying they didn't know what they were
going to do when school was out, except one fellow who had said
nothing the whole time. And he said, well, he said, no
church has called me to pastor, and I'm not musically inclined. I cannot be a minister of music,
and I don't want to teach in a Christian school, and it looks
like there's nothing for me to do. I just guess I'll be a missionary.
As if you cannot do anything else, be a missionary. As if,
well, if you failed at everything else, be a missionary. As if
when you go looking down the echelon of God's ministers, a
missionary is always at the bottom. You said, if you can't do anything
else, I'll be a missionary. Wasn't that way in Antioch. Wasn't
that way. The Lord didn't go scraping in
the bottom of the barrel for a man to go forth as a missionary.
There were five men in this church at Antioch, and you knew only
two of them. You knew only two of them. And those were the two
God called. Those two, Barnabas and Saul.
Barnabas and Saul. They were not self-called. Not
at all. And we're not by any means implying
that when God sends a missionary, he sends always the best man
as God. It's not that. We're just saying he does not
send the worst, you see. He doesn't send the sort who
could not do anything else. These are men proven of God here
in Antioch, and the Spirit of God said it's my work, it's a
better work. Oh, now that one and that one, send them out.
So what did they do? Verse number three, and so they
fasted and prayed and laid their hands on Barnabas and Saul and
sent them away, so they being sent forth by the Holy Spirit.
Now, wait a minute. Verse three says these three
elders sent them out, or the church sent them out, if you
will, and here we're told in verse number four that the Spirit
of God sent them, who did the sending. Well, it's really quite
simple. The Holy Spirit commissioned
them in the church. They're simply recommending them
to the grace of God. You'll find that in the end of
chapter 14. They return to Antioch and gather
the church that had recommended them to the grace of God. It's
God's work, but here we find the church is identifying with
these men, lays their hands on them, and sends them forth, recognizing
God has called them. It's the same in the ordination
of the minister. When the other elders lay hand
on this man, we do nothing to him. We can put nothing on him. We simply recognize that God
is cold. He's a God-cold man. And so here
they go forth, being sons of God, and the Church recommending
them to the grace of God. And observe the place that the
Church has in this as well. I recall again when I was in
Bible college, The Lord revealed to me a door being opened to
my last week in school. I didn't know where I was going.
I did not know what ministry I would be pursuing, if any.
Came back to school and said, well, you know, the Lord's opened
a door for me down in the West End days. We're going down to
minister in the Virgin Islands. And some fellow says, well, what
mission board will send you? And I said, well, no mission
board. He said, well, how do you want to go? Well, a church.
is going to send us down, they're going to sponsor us there, and
the Spirit of God has opened this ministry, and the church
is going to sponsor us as we go, without any mission board."
And he said, well, you can't do that. Why not? Well, you've
got to have a mission board. Well, Barnabas and Saul did not.
All they had was the Spirit of God sending them out. And everywhere
they went, when they needed direction, they asked God for it. Then send
that to Jerusalem or Antioch, to the denominational headquarters,
or to some evangelistic association. They rely upon God. And even
when it comes down to an Acts chapter 16, Paul says, we wanted
to go on to Asia, and the Spirit of God says, no, I forbid you.
All right, we'll go to Athenia, and the Spirit of God says, no,
I forbid you. Well, Spirit, we can't go that way. That's the
Mediterranean Sea. What will we do? We'll wait for
God. God sends a man from Macedonia by vision in Manassas to come
over and help us. The point we've got to show here
is that the work of gospel missions is God's work. He's the author
of it. He's the director of it. And
these men, having been sent of God, go forth to do God's work
with His leadership. So the first point we need to
establish is this. The author and the director of
gospel missions is the Holy Spirit. It's God's work. The Holy Spirit's
work. Second point. What is the work
of a gospel missionary? Look in Deuteronomy 5. And when
they had preached, pardon me, and when they were in Siloamus,
they preached the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews.
Now watch carefully. They preached what? Talk to me.
What did they preach? Verse 5. What did they preach?
The Word of God. Right? All right. Go to chapter
14. Chapter 14. Verse number 7. And there they preached
what? The gospel. Look at verse 21.
Same chapter. And when did they preach what?
The gospel to that city. Now watch carefully for a moment.
Because someone may wonder, now what did they preach? In one
place it says they preached the Word of God. In another place
it says they preached the Gospel. Which was it? Well, it was both,
because they're both one and the same thing. The Word of our
God is the Gospel of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Where
did these men went? They had just one message. We
can go back to the book of Acts, chapter 8, and find in verse
number 4 that at the time of that persecution, they that were
scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word. Then fruit
went down to the city Samaria and preached Christ. Now wait
a minute, what did these people preach? The word of God or Christ?
That's all running the same message. God's word is the message of
the gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul can say in another place,
he can say, I desire to know nothing among you except Jesus
Christ, have Him crucified. And there he can come to the
conclusion of this mystery and say, I shall not declare the
whole counsel of God unto you. Now wait a minute, Paul. What
did you preach? Did you preach nothing to Christ,
or did you preach all the counsel of God? Well, it's all one and
the same thing. All the counsel of God is this
message of Jesus Christ. And if you preach the gospel
of Jesus Christ in every aspect of it, you have declared all
the counsel of God. That's it. The word of God is
this gospel of Jesus Christ. We have a good example of a message
of priests. It was read to us this morning.
Paul read it to us. There in chapter 13 of Acts.
Beginning in verse 16, we're told that Paul stood up and,
beckoning with his hands, said, Men of Israel, in ye that fear
God, give audience. And Luke has here recorded one
of Paul's messages, seemingly word for word, or at least a
lengthy outline of it. And what was this message, Paul
quotes, this Word of God? What does it begin with? Well,
look in verse number 17. The God of this people of Israel,
notice it begins with God. The Word of God always begins
with God. Genesis 1-1 declares, in the
beginning, God created heaven and earth. But wait a minute.
How do you know God exists? Looks like the Bible would begin
by proving God exists. No, God never tries to prove
His existence. He doesn't need to. The heavens
declare the glory of God, the earth is full of his handiwork,
and his witness is in your heart. The most depraved man in the
world knows God exists. And to spend my time flapping
jaws trying to prove that God exists is a waste of time. Every
man knows God exists. That's why he's got all these
idols built up to himself. And here stands up Paul and begins
his message by declaring, this God. This God. Which God? This God. This God of the people
of Israel. He declares which God it is.
He's contrasting into the gods of this world the idols the heathen
have made. And what did he do? He chose
our Father. Notice that. Paul begins his
message with the election. He talks about God and his election. You say, oh no, he mentions a
No, that's much too vague. You give that to them when they've
been a Christian for about ten years and they've learned something.
No, Paul said give it to them the first breath out of his mouth.
The God of our fathers chose a people. And what else did he
do? He chose our fathers and exalted
the people when they dwelt as strangers in the land of Egypt
and with a high honor he brought them out of it. He's talking
about God's salvation of Israel down in Egypt. You see, God's
Word always begins with the gospel, a salvation, good news of deliverance. The election and the salvation
by a God who dwells in heaven and who has delivered a people!
And look at it! And about the time of forty years,
suffering in their manners in the wilderness. You see, it's
also a message about man's depravity. He sees the handiwork of God
and God's salvation, and yet, what does he do? He shows his
bad manners in God's face, and God endured those bad manners
for about 40 years. The man showed his depravity
in God's face like Aaron did when he took the fruit and said,
You told me not to eat it? Watch! And he ate the fruit. And here's Israel, seeing the
wonders of God and the wilderness. And what did they do? You said,
don't complain. God won't listen to us for a
while. Now we've got ready mouths. We're going to complain. And
God suffered their bad manners for 40 years in the wilderness.
But then again, he brought them into the land like he promised.
Brought them into the land, gave them judges to deliver them when
their enemies came upon them. But they weren't satisfied. They
said, no, no, no. We want a king like the Egyptians have. We want
a king that will sit on the throne that we make for him, and we're
the crown that we make for him, and we're the miter and the scepter
that we give to him. We want a king like the other
nations have, and the same as that you have a king. The Lord
God Almighty rules over you. No, no, no. We want a king like
the nations have. And so God suffered their bad
manners and gave them a king, gave them a man head and shoulders
above the rest, a man like they wanted. And pretty soon they
were sick and tired of him. So God gave him a man after his
own heart. And yet in the heart of this
man there was wickedness and rebellion. He sinned against
God. And yet God was pleased to make
a promise and a covenant with that man, King David. He said,
Of your own seed I'll raise up a man who will one day rule over
Israel on the throne of his father David. A Savior I am to deliver
who will come and deliver my people of Israel. And for hundreds
of years the prophets went forth from God to the people with this
message of how that a seed had been promised to David, a covenant
had been made with David, and the sure mercies of David would
be bestowed upon Israel. The prophets for hundreds of
years declaring that one would come one day, Messiah, who would
rule and reign and deliver his people. And the people of Israel
waited for hundreds of years. And then one day a backwoods
preacher stepped out of the wilderness and into the Jordan River, began
to preach and said, I've been sent to prepare the way of one.
He's right behind me. I've been sent to declare to
you that there's one coming right after me. I'm preparing his way.
Messiah's coming. And this John Baptist would stand
there baptizing in Jordan with his eyes searching each audience
who came to listen. He knew one day Messiah would
be there. And one day he was. This Jesus
of Nazareth walked some sixty miles to be baptized of John
and Jordan. John baptizes him, though he's
not worthy to loose his shoes off his feet, he baptizes him.
He's brought forth out of the water, and God said, it's my
son. Hear him, I'm well pleased. And God has now sent the Savior,
the seed of David. And for three and a half years
he ministers among the people a life that was impeccable in
its holiness and righteousness, and heroes were born of the woman
and born under the law and living as we should have lived as God
wanted us to live. Raised his hand in rebellion
against God, a man who never showed bad manners in God's face.
And yet, in spite of his goodness and his mercy, his love and kindness,
we had bad manners and nailed him to a tree. We told God we
don't want him. You're Messiah? No, it's a bad
joke. We don't want him. We sent him
back. We made him to a tree. We told God to look at what we've
done. We laid him in a tomb. We put a seal on the tomb. We
put guards around it. We said, God, there's your son
now. Look at him. He's dead and he's surrounded.
He's sealed and he can't get out. We're done. We wiped our
hands and our bad. God wasn't done. He wasn't done. Raised his son out of that dark
tomb in which went to him. Raised him forth and showed him
unto the people. Gathered his apostles around
him and gave them commission to go forth and declare this
gospel. How that God had endured her merits as long as he would.
Now he's raised up a Savior who was set on the throne of his
father, David. And, oh, my friends, this is
that gospel that Paul preached. This is that Word of God. This
is that promise of the Savior that God made all the way back
in Genesis 3, verse 15, when the gospel was first declared.
This is that Messiah who has now come to rule and reign and
to deliver his people of Israel. And that was the only message
Paul ever preached. The only message. And everywhere
he went, he declared this same gospel. He was on Mars Hill on
one occasion talking to the Stoics and Epicureans, the philosophers
of his day. What did he talk about? Meaningless
philosophy? No. He preaches the gospel. He's
down in the marketplace of another place. And what's he doing there?
Preaching the same old message. Same message. You find him in
Philippi? In some jail? What's he doing?
Preaching the same old message. You find him in Corinth. You
find him wherever he is. What's he doing? He's preaching
the same old message. He's preaching the gospel. He's
preaching the Word of God. You find him before the Sanhedrin
in Jerusalem. What's he doing? Preaching the gospel. You find
him before Thessalonians in Hebron in Jerusalem. What's he doing?
Preaching the gospel. You find him appealing to the
Romans. To do what? To go preach the gospel to Caesar.
And my friend, they were not involved in carrying placards
on the streets, protesting this and protesting that. No. They
were not trying to run for president of Israel. No, none of that. They were not in politics, not
in moral issues. They did not go for trying to
establish a moral majority chapter in some city. No, not at all.
Not at all. They had one goal. Preach the
gospel. I'm going to tell you something,
friends. God has only one kind of missionary. It's the gospel
preaching missionary. The only guy. Or someone may
say, well, I'm a medical missionary. What do you mean? Well, I'm a
Christian doctor, and I have left a lucrative career in the
U.S., and I've gone to a foreign country to where conditions are
backward, and I've gone there as a good Christian gentleman
and a doctor, and there I'm going to serve. I'm going to serve
my Lord as a doctor there. I'm not really a gospel preacher,
but I'm a good Christian doctor. I'm a medical missionary. No,
you're not. God does not have any medical missionaries. God's
missionaries are all gospel preachers, every one of them, down to a
single man. Only one kind of missionary is
a gospel preacher. Or someone will say, well, I'm
an aviation missionary. What do you mean? Well, I'm not
really a gospel preacher, but I fly missionaries all over Brazil
and back, all through the jungles. I fly my airplane taking missionaries.
I'm an aviation missionary. No, you're not. God does not
have aviation missionaries. Oh, God's missionaries are gospel
preachers to the men! A gospel preacher! That's all
God ever commissioned His men to do. Oh, they may do some things
on the field. They may make attempts like Paul
did, but Paul never called himself a tent-making missionary, did
he? No, it's always a gospel-preaching missionary. The only kind of
missionary God has is a gospel preacher. The only kind. And
here goes Paul. And in every aspect of his ministry,
what's he doing? Preaching the gospel. Preaching
the gospel. Declaring Christ. Now there were
other things that Paul did. Let's look at a few of them for
a moment. That's chapter 14. Let's look at it for a moment.
Because this work of a missionary is more than simply printing
the gospel in one place to a locality, alright? It's more involved than
that, and yet it is not more involved than that. What do I
mean by that? Look at it carefully. Chapter 14, verse 21. And when
they had preached the gospels in that city, and had done something
else, they taught many. What do you mean they taught
many? They made disciples of them. They taught them. What did they
teach them? Look at Chapter 18. Chapter 18. Verse 11. And he continued there a year
and six months teaching the word of God among them. Look at it
carefully. What did he teach? The same thing
he preached. You see. When men are brought
to saving faith in Jesus Christ through the gospel, you don't
begin by teaching them something else afterward. You don't begin
by preaching the gospel Paul preached and then start afterward
to preach the gospel Norman Vincent Peale preaches. All right? You
don't go preaching the gospel Paul preached and have men brought
to the gospel and brought to saving faith in Jesus Christ
and then teach them out of, I'm okay, you're okay. No, no, no. It's still the Word of God. It's
still the gospel. That which is taught in the assembly
is the same as that which is preached to the world. The same
gospel. The same message. It's the Word
of God. Alright, so proclamation and teaching. Now what do we
find? I have to go further in that same verse, verse 21. They return again to listen,
and to our corny man, Antioch, confirming the souls of the disciples. Now watch this carefully. We've
got proclamation, we've got discipleship, now we have confirmation. What
do you mean confirmation? Establishing the churches in
the faith. Now how are churches established in the faith? Through
the gospel. Through the Word of God. What
confirms you? What establishes you in the faith
more than the gospel? Nothing. Nothing. Anything else
brings down the foundation. And so here are Paul and Barnabas
going forth, they're confirming the saints, and they're doing
it through the same gospel they preach in the open squares. You see, God's missionaries have
only one message. Every time you hear them, It's the same
old gospel, or it may be a different aspect of it. You can preach
and preach and preach for years and years about the gospel and
never preach it all. But my friend, you've got to
preach the gospel. in confirmation. Look furthermore. Confirming the souls of the disciples,
verse 22, and exhorting them to continue in the faith. All
right, we got confirmation and exploitation. With what do you
exhort God's people? Same old message. It's the gospel
again. What exhorts people to continue
in the faith more than this gospel of Jesus Christ? Nothing. Nothing. And so in every aspect
of their ministry, they're going forth preaching the gospel. That's
all that we're doing. Preaching the gospel. All right?
They did something else along with preaching the gospel. What
was it? Verse 23. And when they would
ordain them elders in every church. Now watch carefully. We've got
proclamation, discipleship, confirmation, exhortation, and now we have
ordination. Ordaining what? Ordaining men. The Lord would raise up men in
these churches. He would carry on the work of
the apostles. He would gather the churches.
And what would these ordained men do? You guessed it. Preach
the gospel. That's it. That's it. My friends,
we've got to realize that the only duty that God's ministers
have is to preach the gospel. Why is that? Well, it's because
Christ has commissioned us to do only one thing, preach the
gospel, to declare this gospel of God's free grace in Jesus
Christ. Furthermore, because this is the only message by which
men will ever be brought to faith in Jesus Christ, it's a power
of God's salvation. No man will ever be in heaven
who did not hear this gospel and believe in Jesus Christ.
The only way to God's glory is through the gospel, through the
gospel. You'll never get there through your works and not through
the law. It's through the gospel. Here's the necessity of preaching
the gospel. And Paul and Barnabas and Paul
and Silas and Paul and Luke, whoever these men were, went
forth with one message, declaring this gospel of Jesus Christ.
Preaching Christ and his gospel. Oh, we like to sing about it,
don't we? We like to sing about, tell me
the old, old story. of unseen things above, of Jesus
and his glory, of Jesus and his love. We like to sing about,
tell me the story often. Tell me the story simply. Tell
me the story always. Tell me the same old story when
I am old and gray. Remember I'm the sinner that
Jesus came to save. And we like to sing that chorus,
tell me the old, old story. Tell me the old, old story. Tell
me the old, old story of Jesus and His love." Then the preacher
gets into the pulpit and preaches something else. How many times
does that happen? Well, go home tonight and turn
your TV on and watch it again, if you have the nerve. Turn it
on this morning, you probably saw it again. We've got every
kind of message in the world to preach nowadays, every kind
of theology there is under the sun, and a ready preacher to
have sounded forth. Who in the world is preaching
the gospel nowadays? There are few and far between. Somebody
asked me just before the meeting this morning, said, Do you have
any false prophets down where you are? And I said, It's a whole
lot easier to count gospel preachers. A whole lot easier, just as easy
there as it is here in Rocky Mount. Why is that? Well, gospel preachers are few
and far between if you got one loving, helping, supporting. Here with Barnabas and Saul going
forth with one message, it's God's only message to the lost,
this gospel of Jesus Christ. And my friend, I've given my
life to this one thing, to preach the gospel, the same gospel Paul
preaches here in Rocky Mount. It's the same gospel I want to
preach wherever I go. It's the only message God will
ever bless, the only one. All the others have their reward,
I'm sure they do.