We welcome David Nelms, a long-time friend and colleague of Buddy, who has a heart for missions and church planting. His leads an organization called the Timothy Initiative that has planted over 23,000 churches in about 40 countries. David explores the question of “Why do we do what we do?” from Matthew 22.
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David Nelms
September 29, 2013
Why Do You Do What You Do?
Matthew 22:36-40
Oh, it is good to be here tonight. I told several of you already you guys are just so…I guess the word is just…blessed. I just don’t know of anybody I have more respect for than Buddy. My goodness. I just stepped down from pastoring 36 years three or four months ago. If I moved anywhere, if I went to any church, it’d be this church right here. Just sit under this guy and listen to him. You are so blessed.
When I heard Buddy had gotten sick or had the incident or whatever it was a few months ago, it just crushed me. We made it a deal about 20 years ago, whichever one of us died first, the other one would preach our funeral. I got real irritated because I thought, “He can’t die. He’s supposed to preach my funeral.” I’ve been praying for him all over the world. I travel a lot. Just to see him on his feet… Buddy, it’s good to see you. You guys are just really blessed. You really are.
I want you to open your Bibles tonight to Matthew 22. I borrowed one of your Bibles in the back. I usually use my phone, but my phone is just about out of juice. I want to answer a question tonight, and that question is…Why? Why has Buddy been in the ministry all these years? Why are you doing what you’re doing? Why do we plant churches? Why do we send out missionaries? Why do we try to share Christ with every living man, woman, boy, and girl?
I’ve started a church planting ministry called The Timothy Initiative, TTI. Basically, all we do is we train church planters to plant churches. We’re about 5-1/2 years old. We’ve planted just about 23,000 churches in about 40 countries. I could tell you story after story after story tonight of people who’ve made sacrifice after sacrifice. The explosion in Pakistan this week… The people who were killed, many of them were our partners there.
Why are people willing to do what they do? Why do you do what you do? Your pastor has traveled all over this world, and the missions emphasis you have here. It’s an incredible emphasis. Well, why do you put the funds, why do you put the time, why do you do what you do?
Buddy and I grew up with the same pastor. He used to say to us all the time, “God is more concerned about why you do what you do than he is with what you do.” As a kid, sitting there in church, I used to think, “Well, that sounds real neat,” but I didn’t think a whole lot about it. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize, “My goodness, he was right.” God is more concerned about why we do what we do than he is with what we do.
You came to church tonight. That’s good. But a better question than did you come is why did you come? Many of you give your offerings weekly, your tithes, your offerings. That’s good. But why do you give your tithes and your offerings? The Bible says not that God loves a giver, but God loves a cheerful giver. It’s not what we do, but why we do what we do. Somebody said, “God loves a cheerful giver”; I love any kind. Any kind will be fine with me, but God loves a cheerful giver. God is more concerned about why we do what we do than he is with what we do.
Now you guys have a missions emphasis that is just incredible. Why? Why have you tried to reach so many people around the world with the gospel? I want to give you some reasons tonight.
1. We love God. The best one. We love the Lord. Look at Matthew 22:36. There was this lawyer one day who came to Jesus, and he asked him a question. I have all kinds of lawyer jokes, but I won’t share them with you tonight. Jesus was this famous rabbi. He was taking the country, and just everybody was all excited about Jesus.
He walks up to Rabbi Jesus and he says, “Rabbi, which is the most important of all the commandments?” You have to understand the setting of the day. There are like 613 commandments in the Old Testament. In that day, there was this debate raging. Everybody was trying to rate them. What was number one, number two, number three, number four? Everybody had their own idea.
Kind of like today with college football. Is Alabama number one, or should it be Ohio State, or should it be Oregon, or Stanford? If you ask 10 different people around the country, you might get five or six different answers. Well, the same thing was happening there. So this lawyer thought, “I want to see what this new rabbi has to say about it.”
He said, “Jesus, which is the greatest of all the commandments?” It didn’t take the Lord long at all to answer. Look at verse 37. He didn’t say, “Let me get back to you on that.” He didn’t say, “Let me think on it for awhile.” Look at what he said. “Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment.'” (Matthew 22:37-38) The greatest of all the commandments: Just love God. Just love him.
Do you know why we do what we do? Do you know why you guys as a church you’ve had such a missions emphasis? You just love God. Just being around a few of you tonight, it’s obvious. I can feel the love you have for God. Because we love God, we want others to know God so they can love him too. We know it is God’s will that everyone hear the gospel, because God so loved the world.
We know God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. We know that. We want God to have what we know God wants. God wants the adoration and the worship and the praise of people all over this world. Have you ever read Revelation 5:9? If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, your destiny is in that verse.
The Bible teaches us in Revelation 5 that when time is no more, when the dust settles, we’re going to find ourselves together at the feet of Jesus Christ. Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the Father. At those nail-pierced feet, we will look at his feet and we will remember the sacrifice the Lamb of God made for us.
But as we look away from his feet and look around, Revelation 5:9 says we will notice there are people there at the feet of Jesus from every tribe and every nation…the word is ethnicity…every people group, every language group. There will be somebody there from every little tribal group on the face of the earth.
It is God’s desire to have people from every one of these groups in heaven at his feet, worshiping him. That is what he wants, and that’s why we emphasize missions. That’s why you do what you do here. You want to give him what he wants, and that is clearly what he wants.
My son lived in Bangalore, India, for about four or five years. Down the road from Jared and Amber’s little house there, there was a Hindu temple. In Hinduism, there are millions of gods. I’ve heard everything from 30 million to 300 million. It’s probably in the middle there somewhere.
At this particular temple they worship a snake. There’s a mound of dirt about this high in the front yard of the temple. Down in that mound, down in the dirt, snakes lived. I stood there and watched it with my own eyes. In the morning, the Hindu priest would come out and he would lay a platter of some white-looking liquid (it looked like milk to me) on the ground next to the mound.
Those snakes would crawl up and out, and they would kind of slither around the liquid. They didn’t drink it, but they just kind of slithered around it. As they did, people would begin to chant and pray. Some would get on their faces, and they would worship the snakes. After awhile the snakes would crawl. They’d make their way back into the ground.
A church planter comes to town. He starts a church in that neighborhood. And soon, some of the people who before were worshiping the serpent were now worshiping the One who with his divine almighty heel crushed the head of the serpent. God is glorified. Why do you send out missionaries? Why have you spent the money and the time and the effort you have? Why? Because you love God. Can somebody say amen to that? We love God. That’s why we do what we do.
2. We love people. We not only love God; we love people. We don’t just love him; we love them. The lawyer was getting ready to walk away. The Bible doesn’t say that, but in my mind, that’s the way I kind of see it. He’s about to walk away. Look at verse 39. Jesus, I think, must’ve said something like this, and I’m going to put it in my own thoughts.
I think he said, “Hey, wait a minute, buddy. I’m not done with you yet. You asked me which is the most important commandment, and I told you. But there’s a second one just about like it. There’s a second one like unto it.” What is that second one? “‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:39-40)
Jesus said, “Wait a minute, Mr. Lawyer. There’s a second one that’s just about as important.” We do what we do because we love God, but we do what we do because we love people also. Why the missions emphasis? Why the giving? Why is Jon in Kosovo tonight? Why? We care about people. We want people to know God. We want people to be washed by the blood of Jesus Christ. We want them to have their sins forgiven. We want them to have a reason for getting out of bed in the morning.
Maybe you’re aware of this, maybe you’re not. Most of the world lives in hell. They live in hell and they’re going to die and go to hell. We don’t want to see that happen. We want people to have their sins forgiven. We want them to experience God. We want them to be able to talk to God and to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives. We want them to have life, abundant life, real life, eternal life. We care about people. That’s why we do what we do.
I had a member of my church till I stepped down a few months ago. His name was Brian McNeely. Brian is the founder of Global Refuge International. If you ever want to work with a ministry that takes care of the least of the least, it’s Global Refuge International. They work with refugees all over the world.
We’ve just become dear friends. Brian told me a story. He was a college football coach for the University of Colorado years ago. He decided to take a bunch of kids on a missions trip. He’d never been on a missions trip, but he just looked at the map. He picked out what we call Burma (Myanmar). He could not have picked a worse spot. He thought, “Well, I’ll go there.”
Well, you’re not even supposed to go there. He had to sneak across the border with a bunch of 20-year-old kids. They found themselves working on a mountaintop with a bunch of tribal people the government was trying to eradicate. Do you remember those old Rambo movies? That stuff was really happening. In fact, it’s still happening over there.
So he’s working on this mountaintop with this village group, this tribal group. This little girl kept hanging around him. She’d hold onto him and hug his leg and wouldn’t let go. She was probably a little orphan. Brian took her picture and stuck it in his wallet. They’d been there for three or four days, and all of a sudden, their host came to him in a panic and said, “You must leave. The troops are down the road. They’re headed this way.”
So Brian and the kids packed up everything and ran across the border into Thailand. They got a couple of hours away and they could hear explosions in the background coming from the area of the village. Brian said to me, “I’ve been back there a million times. I’ve never seen a single person from that village. I’ve never heard from anyone. I’m assuming they’re all dead, including the little girl.”
He said, “The way the government operated was they would come in the middle of the night and lay out land mines around the village. Then they’d start lobbing mortar shells into the village. Everything is blowing up and there’s fire and there’s smoke, and people are getting blown to bits. They run out of their little grass huts in terror, holding onto their little babies, running. As they do, they step on the land mines. If they get through the mines, they have machine gun nests, and they’re just mowing everyone down.
When the dust settles, the soldiers would come into the village and they’d find the wounded. If it was a man or a boy or an old woman, they’d shoot them. If it was a young girl, they’d keep her as a sex slave and use her till they used her up.” Brian said, “I can only imagine that all of those people, including that little girl, that’s what happened to them that night.”
He said, “A few weeks went by, and the University of Colorado is playing the University of Nebraska in Colorado. It was the biggest game of our history. Nebraska was rated number one at the time, Colorado number three. We slaughtered them. It was 60-something to 30-something. Everybody went wild. There were 50,000 to 70,000 fans there. All the students charged down on the field. They’re laughing and singing and dancing. The band is playing. The coaches are high-fiving. Everybody is just going wild.”
He said, “I’m standing there, and all I can think about is that little girl. I pulled her picture out of my wallet. The whole stadium was going wild, and I’m standing there on the field looking at her picture. I figured I needed a change.” So he left Colorado. He became the head coach of Idaho State, a Division I team. He was making a seven-figure salary, over a million dollars a year. But he could find no peace.
His college-aged kids came to him one day and said, “Dad, you know what you need to do.” Brian said, “I looked at my kids and I said to them, ‘Do you really expect me to walk away from salary of a million dollars a year? I have a mortgage to pay. I have to put you kids through school. Do you really expect me to do that?’ They said, ‘Dad, you know what you’re supposed to do.'”
He walked away. He started a ministry working with refugees. His daughter Shaunessy went to North Sudan (not South Sudan) as a missionary. She’s had malaria three times. Precious little girl. About a month or two ago, Brian asked if he could meet with me. I’d been flying a lot, and I said, “If you want to pick me up at the airport and take me home.”
So he picked me up at the airport. It was about two or three months ago. He took me home. As we were sitting in my driveway, he said, “David, I just got back from Syria.” He’s in Syria. He’s working with the refugees there on either side of the border. He said, “I saw something this week I can’t get out of my mind.” I don’t want to get into the politics and who’s good and who’s bad. They’re probably both bad for all I know. I mean, I don’t know.
But he said, “I was in Syria this week, and I saw something I’ve never seen in my life. I came across the dead body of a young girl about 25 years of age. The rebel forces had captured her.” In that part of Syria, before they execute people they skin them alive. They had skinned her alive. Then they cut off her head. Because she was pregnant, they took a knife and they ripped open her belly, and they put a gun to the baby’s head and blew the baby’s brains out. He said, “I’ve seen a lot of stuff, but I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Here’s a man who walked away from a million dollars a year to work with refugees. Why? He loves God; he loves people. He loves him; he loves them. Can I get an amen? Don’t ever get tired of Grace pushing missions. Don’t ever grow weary. Listen, come to this crazy car show. I might fly up from West Palm Beach to attend it. Just come. Give something that can be sold. Just do whatever you can do. Don’t grow weary of this emphasis. We do what we do because we love God, and we do what we do because we love people.
Can I show you some slides very quickly? I’m not sure how much time I have left here, but put up the first slide if you would. Here you go. This is an area of Ethiopia called Langano. It’s all Muslim. These folks, their parents, their parents, their parents, their parents go back a thousand years. There’s never been a church there, never ever.
This is what I call a tree church. One of our students started this church. These folks have come into faith. They’ve come into the kingdom. I have to believe God in heaven is pleased with that. I have to believe that makes him happy. Why do we do what we do? We care about people.
Look at the next picture. Here’s our leader in Ethiopia. He’s a good friend of mine, Berhanu Yoseph. He had the largest Baptist church in Ethiopia back in the 70s. When the Communists took the country, they confiscated his property. They put him in prison. They put his wife in prison. His wife is still scarred from the beating she took. It messed her up.
He was put in prison by that lady right there. Decades went by. Berhanu trained one of our students. The student went out and started a church. This lady came to Christ in that church. Now he is baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit the woman who put him and his wife in prison 30-40 years ago. He did it out of love. He cared about her soul. He cared about her. That’s why we do what we do. We care about people.
Can I show you the next picture? Here is a wheelchair church in Sierra Leone. Do you remember the movie Blood Diamond? If you’re not careful, they cut your arms off, your legs. I don’t know if you’ve been to Sierra Leone. I’ve been to Sierra Leone. It’s like if this is hell, Sierra Leone is just right below it. There’s not much difference.
If you’re handicapped in Sierra Leone, you don’t have much of a life. Here’s a church planter who got burdened for other handicapped people, so he starts a wheelchair church. I believe the angels in heaven rejoice. I believe God loves those people as much as he loves these people here.
Look at the next slide if you would. Here’s a riverbed church in Kenya. These guys are what we call sand harvesters. Now if you say sand harvester in Kenya, people think what you think when you hear the word thug. These guys are thugs. They’re just a rough group. All they do is they dig sand all day. Imagine doing that in the Kenyan heat. They load the sand in these big trucks. They haul them to Nairobi. They make concrete and cement with them. Then the Chinese buy it to build roads all over Africa. These guys are rough.
If you look closely, you’ll see there are no women in the picture. It’s the only all-male church I’ve ever seen. When we were there that day, one of them stood up, and here’s what he said. They we’re having a testimony time. One of them said, “Here’s my testimony. Before this church was started and before I found Jesus, before Jesus found me, right here in this very spot as people would pass through in the middle of the night I used to rob people. I used to beat people. I used to kill people right here. Then I met Jesus. I don’t kill people anymore.”
Now I’ve been in church a long time. I’ve heard like 10 million testimonies. Most of them I wish I didn’t have to listen to them, okay? I’ve heard many testimonies. I’ve never heard anyone stand up in church and say, “I used to kill people. I don’t kill people anymore.” That’s quite a transformation, ladies and gentlemen. I think God cares about those people. I think we’re supposed to also.
Look at the next picture if you would. Here’s a mountaintop church about two kilometers from Somalia. They’re looking toward Somalia. There’s another tree church behind that bush in the back. There’s a little village that had never, ever in the history of the world had a church. When somebody showed up and just told them about Jesus, it was the most wonderful news they’d ever heard. I know God is pleased.
Look at the next picture, would you? Here’s a little alley church in Nairobi. That little lady there is the pastor. Her apartment may be about the size of this little square here. Just a mat on the floor. No furniture. Not a desk. Not a chair. She shares it with her little boy and her little girl.
Her husband died of AIDS. They’re in Kibera, that million-plus slum in Nairobi. They meet between two walls just to keep the sun off of them. We’re talking about the least of the least. I know God cares. I know he cares about those people. And I know he wants us to care about them also.
Look at the next slide, would you? Here’s a deaf church in Ethiopia. We planted six of them last year. Look at the next slide if you would please. Here’s a hillside church in North India. Look at the next slide. Here’s a hut church in Uganda. It’s a neat story. There was this woman, a Muslim wife. A church planter, a TTI guy, came and started a church. She met Christ and came into the kingdom.
She wanted her husband to come to Christ, but she was just afraid. So she said, “I’m going to pray him into the kingdom.” God heard her prayers. The man got saved, and he became a student. He planted this church. All of these are the people he has reached for Jesus Christ there in Uganda.
Look at the next picture if you would. We work in a lot of difficult places. This is in the Congo, the DRC. The guy hanging from the tree is the same one in the top left-hand side of the picture. He is one of our students. One day he was walking home and some guys beat him. They stripped his clothes off, they killed him, and they hung him up in the tree and left him for dead. He left behind his wife and his three children. Where we go, we have people martyred all the time.
Look at the next picture if you would. The first people we reach are orphans. They’re out there by the millions. We have 25,000 church planters, and I don’t know of a one of them who doesn’t have orphans in their home. This little kid’s name is Junior, 4 years old, out in the rural part of Tanzania or maybe Kenya.
He had malaria, malnutrition, rectal prolapse. If you don’t know what that is, it’s when your insides come out with your waste. He’s a little 4-year-old kid, and he has nobody to help him, nobody to buy him medicine, nobody to hug him, nobody to pray for him…nobody. He had nobody.
A church planter comes to town, starts a church. Look at the next picture. He brings little Junior into their home. That’s Gideon. That’s Junior there on the left. He looks different, doesn’t he? No more malaria. No more malnutrition. No more rectal prolapse. He’s in school now, and he can read in his Luo language. But he can also do his numbers. He can recite his numbers and his letters in the English language.
If I understand anything about this Bible, I have to believe there’s a God in heaven who is just thrilled. He is thrilled that somebody cared about that little boy. Why do we do what we do? We love God; we love people.
Would you look at the next picture please? Here’s one children’s ministry of one rural church in Rwanda. At least half of those children are HIV positive. One little village church, just the children’s ministry. I know God is pleased. Jesus is the One who said, “Let the little ones come to me. Do not forbid them. For of such is my kingdom.” I know my God has to be pleased when people like you care about people like them.
Look at the next picture would you please? Ah, this is my favorite one. The lady in the blue, two men to her left, TTI students. Rwanda. Do you remember Hotel Rwanda? The Tutsi and the Hutu tribes killing each other. One day in her little village, she woke up and all of her neighbors turned against her. They killed her mother, they killed her father, they killed her husband, and they killed every one of her children.
Somehow she escaped. She ran for her life. Out in the bush she met Christ, entered one of our training schools, and with those two men she came back to her village, forgave the people who slaughtered her family, started a church, and some of those people behind her there are the very ones who killed her family. Now they’re her brothers and sisters in Christ, and they worship together every Lord’s Day. She cares about people.
Look at the next picture if you would. A tree church. See the lady on the right? She was a prostitute. What’s interesting is that’s not Asia, that’s not Africa; that’s West Palm Beach. That’s five minutes from our church, Buddy, on Okeechobee. We’ve started 30 of those in the last three years down in West Palm. God cares about people in Gwinnett County. You just heard the testimony about the need for foster kids. God cares about people in Atlanta. He cares about people everywhere.
Look at the next picture. Another little church started in West Palm Beach in the last couple of years. They’re already up to close to 200 people. Look at the next picture if you would. An Indian sorcerer, one of those guys who can walk on hot coals, and he’d pray for people. He was a sorcerer. He’d pray for people to get well, and somehow they did. But his own kid got sick, and he prayed, and his kid didn’t get healed. His wife said, “You’re worthless. You ought to end your life.”
He was contemplating suicide when one of our students planted a church. Somebody told him, “If you go to that church, those Christians will gather around you. The brothers and sisters will gather around. They’ll put their hands on you. They’ll pray for you.” So he went to the church and he asked for prayer for his son. God saw fit to heal his son. The man gave his life to Jesus. He has since planted six churches, and he’s training 25 young Timothys to do the same.
Look at the next picture. Here’s a West African church. Look at the next picture. Same church, just a different angle. It grew to 300-400 people in six months and planted four other churches in villages where there’d never been one. I could do this all night. I didn’t go to the Internet and find these pictures. I know these people. These are real people. These are real stories. They’re people whom Jesus died for. Why do we do what we do? We love him; we love them.
Look at the next picture. This is my favorite one. I was there this week in the Himalayas. This is a hillside church, a mountaintop church in Nepal, the Hindu kingdom. Look at them on their knees, hands held together, heads bowed. It’s hard to see, but if you have eyes that can see, right in the middle you’ll see a man standing, for Jesus said, “Where two or more are gathered together, there I will be in the middle.” That’s what he said. I’m so glad somebody cared about these people.
Look at the next picture. Here’s a guy in West Africa. He happened to be a Muslim, and he was sick. He went to the imams. They couldn’t heal him. He went to the doctors. They couldn’t heal him. His wife said, “Why don’t you bring that new Christian pastor who has just come to town into our house?” He said, “No Christian will ever come into my house.” But his wife did what most wives do. She paid no attention to what her husband said. She invited the pastor anyway, and he prayed, and God saw fit to heal him.
In his own words, here’s what this man said (and I quote), “Esa is more than a prophet; Esa is incomparable. Esa is the Son of the living God. He is Lord of heaven, and he is Lord of earth. I will serve Esa till the day I die.” That’s what he said, amen? Isn’t that great?
Look at the next picture. Same little village. This guy was an idol worshiper. His son was paralyzed. The priest couldn’t help him. The doctors couldn’t help him. The priest said, “If you ever step foot under that little church shed, you’ll die.” So he was afraid to go to church. But one night he was lying there trying to sleep. He could hear the brothers and sisters singing. He thought, “What have I got to lose?”
He picked up his little boy, and he rushed to that church, and they gathered around him, and they began praying for him, and nothing happened. There was no miracle…except in his heart. It touched his heart. It touched him that people cared about his little boy, that people he didn’t even know would pray for his little boy. He saw the tears. He felt the love, the compassion.
As he was carrying his little boy home, here was his prayer. He said, “Jesus, I give you my life, and I’m going to serve you from this point on. Whether you heal my son or not, I’m yours.” He laid his little boy in bed. The next morning when he got up, he said, “My son could move his leg about an inch. By the end of the week, my little boy was outside running and playing with the other little boys in the neighborhood.” Now he’s studying to be a church planter himself.
Look at the next picture, would you? Here’s a church in West Africa. It’s not even a tree church. They don’t even have a tree. In fact, they don’t even have chairs. They have to bring their own chairs to sit on. It’s what we call a BYOC, bring-your-own-chair church. You could save a lot of money, Buddy, if we did it that way, just for the record.
I started reading this Bible through twice a year when I was 18 years old. I’m 59. I’ve read it through over 80 times, from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. If I understand this Book, my God is thrilled with that right there.
Look at the next picture, and I’ll hold it there to the end. I’m almost done. Why do we do what we do? We love God. Why do you guys reach out like you do? Why are you spending all this time and effort and energy and money? You love God; you love people. But there’s a third reason.
3. He told us to. Now if you look back at the passage, there’s a word Jesus repeated three times, verse 36, verse 38, and verse 40. Do you know what that word is? It’s the word commandment, or commandments. Did you know loving God and loving people is not a request; it’s a command? Jesus said, “The first and greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart.” It’s a commandment.
We talk about the Great Commission. The Great Commission is in the Bible five times…Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, John 20, Acts 1. When God says something once, it’s kind of important; if he says it five times, you’d really better pay attention. But the first time he gives us what we call the Great Commission, which is basically take the gospel to the whole world, Matthew 28:19-20, if you look at the previous verse, verse 18, here’s what Jesus said. He said, “Hey, folks, listen up. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations.”
Let me paraphrase. “I’m the big Boss. I have the right to tell you how to live your life. I have the right to tell you what to do, and here’s what I’m telling you to do. I want you to go all over the world, all nations, and make disciples everywhere you go.” If you look at the Great Commission, those five verses, there’s no please in any of them. It’s not a request; it’s a command. Why do we do what we do? Because he told us to.
As I wrap this thing up, I think another question could be asked, “Why have some of us (not you; probably people more like me) been so slow to do what he told us to do?” Ah, I could tell you story after story. Did you know in India tonight there are still 200,000 villages that have never, ever had a Christian presence of any kind? There’s never been a church there.
I will never forget the grief that just swept over my soul when I was standing out in the middle of a God-forsaken place where people had basically been worshiping demons forever. Suddenly, it occurred to me. These people are not saying no to Jesus Christ; they have no idea who he is because nobody has ever told them.
One day I got up in Dhaka, Bangladesh, before dawn, and I drove until after dusk. I cannot tell you how many mosques I saw, how many temples I saw. I never saw a single visible sign of a Christian presence. I was in Nepal this week…36,000 villages. Over 30,000 of them have never, ever had a church of any kind. Of the villages in Sri Lanka, a Buddhist nation, 90 percent have never had a church of any kind.
You take India and her neighbor China. There’s that border there, the Indo-Chinese. Those two nations together make up one-third of the population of the world. There are 2.5 billion people who live in those two nations. If the stats are right, approximately 95 percent of them do not know Jesus. The vast majority of those are in places where there has just never been a Christian presence to proclaim a clear gospel message.
Perhaps in addition to the question, “Why do we do what we do?” maybe some of us need to ask, “Why have we not done what he told us to do?” The problem is not manpower. The problem is not systems or technology. I think maybe the problem is our priorities. Jesus said, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all of these things shall be added to you.”
Could it be for some of us (I don’t think you; I think people like me) our priority has not been first the kingdom? That’s a big emphasis here in your church, the kingdom of God. Does his kingdom consume us? It should. I could tell you so many stories. In the last four or five days, I’ve talked to various church planters. One of them was thrown in prison for three months and had his house burnt to the ground. He’s still preaching for Jesus.
Another one has had four members of his church martyred this year. One of them was a young woman about 20 years old. She started witnessing to her neighbors, and they began hitting her. They knocked her to the ground, and they began kicking her, and they kicked her to death just a few months ago.
I talked to another one who showed me a document from his father. When he accepted Christ, his father disinherited him, kicked him out of the house. He said, “I’m no longer your father.” With tears in his eyes, he looked at me and he said, “My father has forsaken me, but I know my heavenly Father will never leave me. He will never forsake me.” I talked to another one who has been chased out of his home. He can’t sleep in the same place two nights in a row. There are all kinds of death threats on his life. I could just go on and on.
This picture right here. If that picture had been taken back in February, there was a man in the picture, the father. His name was Ganesh. Ganesh is the Hindu elephant god, the god of prosperity. If you go into any business in a Hindu country, they’ll have a big fat elephant there because they’re praying for prosperity.
His name was Ganesh. He came to faith in Christ, and he became a TTI student. He went to his village to start a church, and they beat him to death. They beat him to death. That was February of this year. He left a wife, a widow, and a little boy. The following month, March of this year, the woman went outside her house early before dawn to gather sticks to make a fire to cook breakfast for her boy, and a rogue elephant saw the woman and charged her and trampled her to death. Now all that’s left is the little boy.
Some of our guys came and took him away and put him with a Christian family to take care of him, brought two more church planters into their house, prayed over the house, dedicated it as a house of prayer, and left those two church planters there. That was in March of this year, Palm Sunday of this year. I don’t know how long those two will last. Why do they do what they do? They love God, they love people, and he told them to.
I’ll close with this. I remember I was in Thailand, and a couple of guys came to learn how to plant churches. As I got to talking to them, I found out they were from Myanmar, and I said, “How’d you get here?” They said, “We sold our houses. We sold everything we had. We bought tickets on the bus. We took the bus until our money ran out, and we walked through the jungles for three days to get here.” I said, “How are you going to get home?” They said, “We’re going to walk.” It would take them weeks.
Why would someone sell their house and everything they have to listen to somebody like me teach them how to plant a church in a country where they’re going to persecuted for doing it? Why do people do stuff like that? Let me tell you why. They love God, they love people, and they understand the One with all authority told us to go make disciples everywhere. That is why we do what we do.
Boy, it has been a real pleasure being here with you tonight. May God bless you. Thank you.