Zambia Hunt

Edited sermon transcript preached by G.Darrell Champlin.

Our Commitment to Missions

Our commitment to missions must be driven by our love for God, rather than our love for people. Serving others, when fueled by feelings of compassion, will quickly grow tired, discouraged, and dissipate. It is the love of Christ that constrains us. We can only love others as God intends if we first love the Lord, our God, with all our hearts, souls, and minds. It is only then that we can love our neighbors as ourselves. 

Deeds of compassion may be genuine, but they are often rooted in emotion and fueled by selfish ambition. Those acts of compassion may be meeting the secret needs of our own hearts, giving us a feeling of goodness, or assuaging our guilt. Compassion can dissipate when you discover that the person toward whom you felt compassion continues on in lifestyles and choices that perpetuate their situation. 

Missionaries from the West often view host cultures and peoples through Western eyes and understandings and are moved to do something to help. Without understanding and care, that help can often perpetuate the problem instead of meeting needs. Compassion fades quickly when the Westerner learns that they have been “played” or that the people do not want their help. Compassion may be what gets your attention, but love for Christ is what keeps you going year after year.

Acts 26:16-18 But rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.

Jesus appeared to Paul and announced, “I will make you a minister.” The word used was – ‘huperete.’ This was the lowest of slaves in the Roman world, literally referred to as “an under-rower.” This was often someone taken from prison and forced into a slavery that meant certain death. He was chained to a bench in the bottom of a Roman warship, and there he would die. Jesus told Paul that he was calling him to a task to which he would be chained as a slave. 

But there is a second term here that gives us further instruction – Witness, the Greek word for martyr. There is no difference between the two words: witness and martyr. A witness is willing to die for his witness. Every Christ-follower is commanded to be a witness. 

While we are all commanded to witness, some are called to be a missionary or a pastor. This call begins with salvation and continues into a particular service. 

This is a call that came out of eternity past, before the world began.  This is a calling of salvation and service. This call was put into motion by the incarnation of Christ, culminating in the crucifixion and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. God’s purpose for our lives comes from the sovereign mind of God and is made known to us.

Paul explains to Timothy that he was called before the foundation of the world (1 Tim 1). Paul had been called to be chained to a bench as a slave, a servant of God, expending his life for the fulfillment of God’s mission purposes.

This call in Acts 26:17 includes a people to whom God is sending him, in verse 18. Here God clearly defines the mission (18): “To open their eyes.” This mission resulted in specific outcomes by those whose eyes were opened:

• So that they may turn from darkness to light.
• So that they may turn from the power of Satan to God.
• So that they may be sanctified by faith in Jesus Christ

Origin of a Burden

A burden is born against the backdrop of our own culture. Westerners see the world through Western eyes. They go somewhere in the world, on a short trip, and see how wonderful and welcoming the people are, and make assumptions. In reality, all of this is a tourist view – we are seeing something that is not quite real. It is derived from what is seen, heard, and felt in the context of your own vantage point.   

Burden originates in me. This is what makes me respond from within the flesh of my own person. A burden is the response of a human heart to the plight of another human being. This is compassion; your hurt in my heart. 

This is not limited to only Christian’s; anyone can have such a burden. Many philanthropic organizations respond to the plight of people and seek to alleviate human difficulty and suffering. 

In Matthew 9:37-39, Jesus urged them to lift up their eyes and look on the fields white to harvest! But why did Jesus wait three years to give the great commission? Why not at the beginning of his ministry?

Because they would not have understood – up until then, it had been about Jews only, but there was something fundamental that was about to change. This mission was not going to be just for Jews; it was going to be about everyone! 

So in his ministry, Jesus demonstrated the great commission by reaching out to thieves, prostitutes, Gentiles, immoral persons, etc. 

As you read Matthew chapter nine, look at the description of the different types of people:  

The helpless (1-2), the hired (9), the humble (10), the haughty (11), the high (18), the handicapped (22), the hostile – demon possessed (23), and the harried – those easily victimized (35). When we look at this harvest, it moves us to compassion. Jesus was compelling his disciples to look at the harvest! They were to pray that God would thrust laborers into the harvest – this was an illustration of a burden born of compassion.

A Burden Is Not Enough

But compassion alone will not keep you on the mission field! A burden is subject to dying! It can turn into loathing, discouragement, and defeat. When you begin to minister to people in the midst of their difficulties, you discover that most of what happens to people is a result of their own decisions.

This is why we must respond to a call to follow Jesus Christ. A call is spiritual; a burden is from within the heart of man. A call is from without; it is a response to the voice of God in our spirit. Ezk. 3:17. 

God speaks to the prepared heart. In the early 1900s, missionaries were called at an average age of ten years old. During that period, 40,000 missionaries were sent from the West. These children listened to adult preaching and were taught to obey and listen. The homes and churches prepared the hearts of children to know, love, and serve the Lord. They feasted on expository preaching. 

The Call of God

The Spirit of God speaks to our spirit, and we know it. It is the unshakable assurance that God has spoken. This first happened in our salvation – he came and opened our consciousness, mind, and thoughts, and by the grace of God through the word of God, he has moved upon us the assurance that we are guilty before God, and we must repent and believe. In the same way he speaks to us for service.

The calling is recognized by others – your local congregation will give the recognition and affirmation to that call. The key is to look upon the unseen with the eyes of our spirit to know that we are called by God. 

It is the call of God that puts you into ministry, and it is the call of God that keeps you there. Circumstances will change, but the assurance that God has providentially placed you and given you a mission to fulfill. Every great servant of God has had a place and a people to which He has called them.

Three Hinderances to our yielding to the Lordship of Christ:

• Refusal to acknowledge the Mysterious Tremendium. Acknowledged God for how He is! The overwhelming acknowledgement of the holiness of this great God! (Is. 6:1-6). He is Holy – just and must punish every sin.
• Refusal to acknowledge the nature of our redemption (Rom. 12:-12)
• Failure to understand and appropriate the brevity of life (Jn. 6:35). God will totally encamp you, he will become the delight and life of your very being. I will be in you in every fiber of my body. He becomes everything.

If God is sovereign, God is ruler of all things (1 Tim. 6:15-16). God’s constant care for and absolute rule over creation is for his glory and the good of his people. The universe exists in God – His presence causes the universe to be a universe, and he sustains the world, keeping it moving instead of devolving into chaos. If God is sovereign, then this sovereign God has an individual purpose for each life!

Surrender to your God and offer yourself up to serve Him! Respond to His call to salvation and service! Go in the power of the Holy Spirit among the nations and proclaim the glories of Christ!

Sermon transcript edits by Claude AI