Tim Carns
Oct 9, 2022
INTRODUCTION
Today I wanted to turn our attention to missions and I thought I would begin today by asking: when did the Christian missionary movement start? It wasn’t in the States in the 1900’s or the England’s Baptist Missionary Society in the 1800’s or the Moravians in the 1700’s or even the Reformation.
Actually, missions movement began all the way back right after Pentecost. And it may surprise you to learn that it did not begin with a church committee decision or a missions conference or someone who suddenly felt inspired to leave Jerusalem for foreign lands. What actually launched the mission’s movement in the early church was an execution—an execution of a man named Stephen. After he was stoned to death, Luke writes in Acts 8:1
BODY SERMON
TEXT: 2 Cor. 5:11-21
I. Reverence for Christ (vv. 11-13)
II. Love of Christ (vv. 14-17)
III. Reconciliation through Christ (vv. 18-21)
CONCLUSION
On the campus of Wheaton College, there is a plaque dedicated to one of its graduates—a missionary I mentioned earlier, Jim Elliot. At the bottom of the plaque are the words of 2 Cor 5:14, “FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST CONSTRAINETH US.” And above that passage the plaque says this:
BECAUSE OF THE GREAT COMMISSION, ED AND JIM, TOGETHER WITH NATHANAEL SAINT …, ROGER YOUDERIAN AND PETER FLEMING WENT TO THE MISSION FIELD WILLING FOR “ANYTHING–ANYWHERE REGARDLESS OF COST.” THEY CHOSE THE JUNGLES OF ECUADOR – INHABITED BY THE AUCA INDIANS. FOR GENERATIONS ALL STRANGERS WERE KILLED BY [THEM]. AFTER MANY DAYS OF PATIENT PREPARATION AND DEVOUT PRAYER, THE MISSIONARIES MADE THE FIRST FRIENDLY CONTACT KNOWN TO HISTORY WITH THE AUCAS.
ON JANUARY 8, 1956, THE FIVE MISSIONARIES WERE BRUTALLY SLAIN—MARTYRS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.
You know, just a few months after he graduated from Wheaton, while preparing for the mission field, Jim Elliot wrote in his journal: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”
Christ is worth the sacrifice; His message is worth the sacrifice; The souls of those who need to hear are worth the sacrifice.