A Living Sacrifice

Yeah, we um we enjoyed our trip. Um it was such a blessing to uh meet the brothers and sisters over there uh that we support. Um that was good. It was fun to also hang around with the Dela Cruises. Got to know that family a little bit better. We've always had a lot of respect for them uh and got to know them a little bit better and that was that was really sweet. We enjoyed that as well too. One of the things that hasn't been shared though is that we ate like crazy. I did not know that when you visit the Filipino homes, you're going to eat at every single home. And uh we ate five to six times a day.

And there was no small meals. Every meal was a fullon large meal. And uh you know, you're you're you're showing up to these people's homes or their or their church and they have taken the time to do this for you and you want to be respectful and so you eat and if you eat a small part, it's not going to be respectful. So you got to eat a decent portion, right? So, I didn't know this was going to be this way. So, the first couple days, breakfast came and I loaded up. And then that's about 6:30 in the morning. And then about 9:00, I'm I'm doing it again. And then 11:00 a.m. I'm doing it again. I'm thinking, "Holy smokes, a lot of food."

And it basically put me in a food coma. And so, uh, go to the We'd go to the convention. Convention was in the, uh, later half of the day, early evening, late afternoon. and uh you just be utterly stuffed. And so sitting there on the on the chair listening to the speakers speak and just being stuffed but enjoying the time being there and uh one of the things I noticed that they also do is is they have the children that came and were in the congregation as well too. And uh uh the children would would stay with the mom for a period of time and like kids are they're not going to stay still. And they would get up and they would wander around the the sanctuary and they'd come up to their dad's and bug their dad a little and the dads would usually look down there and give them a little hug, little kiss them on kiss them on the head and then then send them back to the mom and they'd waddle on back and that was going on.

But what was really kind of cool is they were quiet and they weren't disruptive and they weren't running around. And the reality is if we brought all of our kids in right now, we know, right, it's going to get noisy, right? That's our culture is different. We couldn't do that. And I was kind of impressed that they were so quiet. So, at the break when they had the break uh between speakers, I I I managed to get some strength to get out of my chair and walked over to one of the pastors and told him how impressed I was that the kids were quiet. And then I asked, I said, "Well, we can't do that. What do you do to keep the kids quiet?"

And he goes, "Oh, we feed them." And I thought, "Okay, put me in a food coma. Put them in a food coma. It works." And so, yeah, we enjoyed them. What I want to do is I just want to spend the rest of our time if I can about 15 20 minutes and share with you uh some of my observations uh some of the things that I saw um that encourage me and help me understand a little bit missions in the church and how they are going together uh in the hopes that it helps uh you and encourages you uh in uh test in your uh outreach I guess as well too. And one of the things that or one of the verses that was that came to my mind often when I was watching what was going on there with the pastors was Romans 12:1.

You can look that up, but I'll read it here. Romans 12 verse one says, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. The pastors that we observed and their families really typified this verse. They presented their bodies as a living sacrifice in their service to their Lord Jesus Christ. I met a pastor, his name was Rey. got the opportunity to play basketball with him one morning and we visited his church and and he has a sound room in his church a little bit bigger than this back area over here and he told me that uh when the church was under construction and still to that day at times uh what happens is his family actually will live in that sound booth.

uh they'll go to their churches before their churches are completed and they'll continue to have worship in an uncompleted church and to get things to work out for the church and his family. Uh to make that work, they would they would live in the sound booth. And he has four children. And I was looking at that sound booth and you can imagine putting four kids and two adults in area that small. That's that's really tight. And even as pastor is telling me this, he kind of starts laughing because even he recognizes that this is this is extreme. But it it bears a testimony to the uh extent that that these men and their families go to in wanting to serve the people and wanting to reach out and to get the gospel message out.

These pastors, they work very long hours as as Hannah mentioned and Marissa as well too. They don't have a lot of resources. They're often poor and yet they attend in intentionally sacrifice themselves. In fact, they are poor because they are sacrificing themselves for their savior. And as I watched this, I was thinking and reflecting on this verse and I was thinking, what a good example for us and how to live out our lives. Now, we're in a different culture. We are going to express that maybe in a little bit different way, but but really we need to look at ourselves and ask ourselves what do we value most?

What are we willing to sacrifice for? Because the reality is a lot of us will sacrifice for some things but but that same level of sacrifice isn't necessarily there for the Lord. Our Lord Jesus sacrificed everything. He sacrificed his time. He sacrificed his sleep. He sacrificed his social position. He sacrificed everything for us. ultimately going to the cross and bearing the sin of the world on him as he gave up his life for us. This example of our Lord Jesus Christ, I think, is what Paul is referencing in uh Romans 12:1 where he speaks of the mercies of God. It was God's mercy and sending his son to give life for believers that he's speaking of.

And now true believers, we are now to offer our lives back in the same way to the one who has saved us. As I watched our Filipino brothers and sisters on this trip, this is an idea that they this I noticed that this is an idea that they often reflect on. They you hear in their speech as you talk to them outside of the conference. It's always there cruising in their mind. How are they going to serve the Lord? What can they do for their Lord? And it's not just that they have this aspect of doing things for the Lord. They also have an aspect in their view of the Lord that that is a little bit different from ours that is actually maybe a little more correct than ours because uh while we often see our Lord and we reflect on the mercy that we have received.

They they see that as well too. But but they also reflect on the righteousness of God. They see the righteousness of God and they recognize that that God's wrath is imminent. that God's wrath is already being expressed upon uh sinfulness and that it's going to be expressed in its fullness and its future and and in that they see an urgency to want to reach out to people with the mercies of God. Their understanding of God's righteousness and his coming wrath is one of the things that drives them to go out into the world and as pastor Andy noted support missions all over the world. While while I was there, I met mission uh several missionaries from the um uh different or going to the different um old Soviet block countries as well as Ukraine.

They they're sending missionaries everywhere and yet they have very little uh resources and they're able to make this happen. And that reflects that that urgency that they have and knowing that God is also a righteous God. Their correct view drives them to be bold. But I also notice that as they have this high view of the righteousness of God, it also seems to affect or does affect I believe their their fear of God. We are called to fear of we are called to fear God. And and why you might think that having a high view of the righteousness of God would create a dreadful fear. What I noticed in the pastors there is this actually creates a joyful desire to want to sacrifice themselves for the Lord.

oftentimes why I was only catching maybe 10% of the the discussion um from the pastors which they actually enjoyed. They love to tease to tease me over it. Um but but I could pick up aspects of it and there was something that came up again and again and it was a call to the pastors uh would you give more? Would you give more of yourself? And these men are already giving way more than most of us give. And they're being called on to give more. And you think they would say, "Oh, I've given enough." But but instead, every single time that that call came up, there was a chorus of amens and excitement that roused up in the room as as their heart's desire was expressed.

They wanted they wanted to serve the Lord. The one thing I think that we can learn from this is that our desires and our effectiveness in the kingdom of God is to have also that view of the righteousness of God. He is greatly merciful and we sing about that every Sunday. But he's also righteous. And because he's righteous, there should be an urgency uh for us to uh get the mercy or the word, the mercies of God out to all men and all women. Now, there's a second point that I noticed in watching our brothers and sisters over there, and it actually lines up with verse two of chapter 12 of Romans. Let me read verse two.

It says, "Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is good and acceptable and perfect will of God." I had the opportunity to uh speak on godliness uh within leadership at their graduation. And after I came down, I had one of the pastors come up to me and it was really really kind of cool. He comes up to me and he starts quoting to me uh Charles Spurgeon's comments on godliness from Charles Spurgeon's book, Morning and Evening. And I heard that and it just blew me away. Hey, I would if I came down tonight and somebody here came up to me and started quoting to me Spurgeon, I'd be surprised.

But to be in the Philippines and have a brother that doesn't his native language isn't English and to come to me and and to to speak on that just absolutely blew me away and encouraged me. It spoke to the depth of a lot of the men that were there and their understanding of the gospel and their understanding of the depth of scripture. And that was very encouraging. But shortly after that, I had another man come up to me, a missionary in fact, and he and he came up and he told me, he said, he said, 'Brother, would you would you spend some time and talk with me when I was speaking on the necessity of godliness within leadership, I spoke out of 1 Timothy chapter 3 and and one of the requirements there is that uh the overseer uh the pastor uh is not to be a striker.

And he said, "I think I'm a striker." And what I had done is I had I had spoken the fact that that that striking is is not just just the physical activity of striking but the heart issue as well of that desire to strike out and how that can be uh in through a verbal way or or through an emotional way. And he said, "You know what? I I I've been striking my my son in a verbal way." And he wanted to talk. And so we set some time aside and we went and got coffee and we talked a little bit and we talked about Colossians 3 21 where where it says, "Fathers provoke not your children to anger lest they be discouraged."

And we talked about ideas like Proverbs 22:6 of training up a child in the way he should go and when he's old he will not depart from it. And as my as my as my brother heard this and this word, he was he was encouraged and the light bulb started to come on and he started to recognize that that that there's more to scripture to apply than than he had actually thought of. And then we started to talk about marriage and counseling and marriage and and he was start talking about counseling with marriage where a a believer would or a believing Christian a believer would want to marry a non-believer. And in his opinion, all he could say to that was that it would be a gamble for the the believer to do that because there would be no assurance that the unbeliever would come to faith.

But but other than that, he didn't have much to say. And I was a little surprised. And so we went to Colossians 3 and Ephesians 5 where there's specific roles for husbands and wives to carry out within the marriage relationship and talked about how you could not carry out those roles when you're in a mixed relationship. And for that reason alone, uh, you need to counsel in in in not allowing that union to come together because you simply cannot live out how God has called you to live out. What I found as I talked with this man and and learned with a couple other guys is that they had fallen into a trap of being so solely focused on evangelism that they didn't give much attention to the application of the rest of God's truth.

And because of that, his thinking was conforming to the world. And he had no intention of wanting to do that. That's why he reached out to me because when he saw that there was something wrong, he immediately came over. His heart's desire was to follow after the Lord. But the reality is is he had focused so solely just on on preaching the gospel and nothing else that he was missing the application of the rest of God's word to his family and to his wife and to counseling those that he was responsible for my brother as I was talking to him I realized just needed a little extra encouragement in thinking through God's word so that he could apply it to the rest of his life Because the reality is,

as much as he wanted to get the gospel out and and he had a good heart in doing that, as much as he wanted to do that, the reality is is people would look at his family, they would see the troubles within the family and the family would not be a good testimony back for the message that he's giving. You see, the family and the church need to be the evidence of the message that we're proclaiming. Disciplehip having people or seeing people come to Christ are are actually all tied together. They support one another. The great commission in Matthew 28 19-20 says this. It says, "Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I've commanded you.

And lo, I'm with you even to the end of the world." Amen. That comment there to to teach the nations is actually the command aspect of that sentence. Every other action word in there uh isn't actually a command. It's a participle that that supports the command. So the go and the baptizing and the teaching in verse 20 are are participles that describe what Jesus means by to teach. And to teach in that aspects means to make a disciple. In fact, that same word is translated as disciple in Matthew 27:57. And so what you see is that Jesus's command is not simply limited to outreach or to different aspects of outreach.

What his command is to what his command is is to make the disciples. And to make the disciples requires uh the going uh the baptizing seeing them come into the faith and to continue teaching once they're in the church. Amen. It is all the same call. The great commission is really to seek to bring people into the conformance of Christ's likeness. This means that missions is done everywhere we go. If we have the mindset that missions is only uh traveling out to another country or you know street preaching or something like that, we've missed the understanding of what that actually means. missions is to see the see unsaved come to be saved and those who are saved to grow in the likeness of Christ.

They they are an idea that is linked together. And so the sacrifice that's called for in Romans chapter 12 is not a limited kind of sacrifice but a sacrifice of of of transformed or renewing of a mind of a mind that is in line with Christ that is then fruitful to carry out that great commission of all that the Lord Jesus teaches. And I love how scripture says that this comes about within our hearts. In 1 Corinthians chapter 3:18, it says, "But we all with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changing into the same image from glory to glory, even as the spirit, even as by the spirit of the Lord."

How do we sacrifice ourselves with the renewing of our minds so that we are effective so that we understand and we can proclaim or so that we can make an effect in the kingdom. According to this verse, it's that we are to behold the l the glory of the Lord. And you know in Paul's teaching when you see Lord he's he's referring back to to Jesus. The part of the trinity that he's reflecting on is Jesus Christ. uh Paul's uh uh understanding of Jesus is very very doctrally correct. He sees Jesus as Lord Jesus Christ uh Lord uh being like master Jesus the name that was given to him and then Christ the anointed one or this or the the Greek word for the Hebrew word Messiah.

And so when you see just Lord what he's doing is he's shortening it down but he's referencing Jesus. And what he's saying is is that beholding the glory of the Lord Jesus, we are then cha changed by the spirit from glory to glory. Our sacrifice that we need to make needs to include this aspect of reflecting on the glory of Jesus Christ so that we can be effective in the kingdom. Being fully focused on the glory of Christ is to live out Christ in all areas of our life. Not just select ones like my brother, our brother, this one missionary had tripped up on because living out in all areas of our life is really where we are or where he where we have the greatest effect on the world.

In fact, when the church as a whole lives out for Christ in all areas of our life, that is when we are going to be the most effective in ministry. Well, I'm sorry, in missions. It's when we're going to be able to reach out the most. And we all have some people that that want to take off and go further away from the church than others, but because they have the support of being built up by the church and and and having their focus put on Christ, um they're effective as they go. You see, we are to be as a whole evidence to the world about the reality of our salvation. In John 13:34-35, Jesus says, "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

By this all men know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. We need to be missions focused, but we need to be missions focused because we're Lord Jesus focused. Having a right view of our God, having our right view of Jesus, having a right view of the the gospel that we have in Christ will make us effective. And so as I close here, I just want to encourage you. Please encourage our Filipino brothers and sisters. They are making those sacrifices and they are working very hard for the Lord and they're doing it with joy. But also pray for them uh that they will uh reflect on the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ so that they will uh continue to have that joy in their life as they serve. And then for us here, may we too reflect on the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ that we may be effective uh in reaching out to the