I could change the topic of what I want to talk to you about from originally it was going and sending in the local church. After listening to Paul, it could equally be entitled a mission, mission-minded church. So let's pray before we start. Oh Father, I pray that you will speak through me. Lord, this is so personal to think through these things.

I pray that you would help us as churches and others from other churches to think through these things rightly, that we would count the cost and joyfully be willing to pay them. But help us to count them, Help us to think rightly about these things. The precious blood of your Son has been spilt for your church. How dare we come up with new and creative ways to push forward the boundaries of His kingdom. So help me, I pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. The main thing that I want you to remember from the 15 minutes that I have is that obedience to the Great Commission and the local church demands the same level of devotion whether you're going or whether you're ascending. And as I pray this is really, if this sounds personal, it's because that it is, is my family and Paul's as we count the cost, as our churches count the cost of contemplating long-term engagement in hostile areas. So I want you to remember that. I want you to remember that whether you're staying behind and holding the ropes, as you've heard that phrase used multiple times, or if you're going, the same level of devotion and obedience to the Great Commission is expected.

We expect it of you and you should expect it of us. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has repeatedly and clearly commanded us to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. Matthew 28, Acts 1, Mark 16, to name three places. The response of the apostles as they went to the ends of the earth further reinforces our marching orders. These guys went, some maybe as far as India.

If you think about the way they got there, it's incredible how far out they went. But the central command of Christ in these three places is to go, taking the gospel with you. And by way of introduction, I just want to explain a couple of things. I'm really thankful that it's already been said multiple times that this is not to the exclusion of local outreach and ministry. It's actually the testing ground.

It's the proving ground. If you aspire to missions, missionary activity, and you're not actively ministering where you are, it will be a huge red flag to any elder team that you approach. We all believe, you've heard it from all of us, I believe, that you need to be engaged in local outreach. However, the focus of my time is about being sent out to cross cultural, crossing geographical, cultural, and linguistic barriers to take the gospel to these places. When I speak of going and sending in the local church today, I'm specifically thinking about our local church's engagement in this kind of work, geographical, cultural, linguistic boundaries being crossed with the gospel.

And you may say, why are you being so specific, Michael? And our brother Jamie already referenced some staggering statistics that you can find on Joshua Project. He threw out a percentage of right over 40 percent, 41 and some odd tenths of a percent, And that's unreached. If you go to their website and look, there's different categories backing away from unreached. And if you know anything about the Joshua Project, A lot of folks that make it into their Christian category, they're just born Christian, so I think 41 some odd percent is being super gracious with the progress of the gospel in the world today.

So the other reason I'm being so specific about what I'm talking about in sending and going in missions in the local church is because of the percentage of financial resources. There's a site, it's called the Traveling Team, I just wanted to read a couple of numbers off to you for you to get an idea of how Christian resources are distributed across the world because our target context is a Muslim context. Listen to this number. 1.7 million Muslims and you have 4200 missionaries. That's one missionary for every 405, 000 Muslims.

Christian workers in the reached world, 4.19 million local workers, that's over 75% of Christian workers are focused on the reached world. That's human resources. The financial resources are just as pathetic. Americans have recently spent, this is, I don't know what year this is from, but Americans recently spent more money buying Halloween costumes for their pets than the amount given to reach the unreached. I mean, in 2001, this is, you know, 17 years ago, 1% of giving to missions went to the unreached.

So we're, as a church in the United States, in the world, we're in desperate need of re-categorizing our priorities. So the priority of the focus that I'm talking on is going particularly to unreached and going and sending in the local church to the unreached world. So what does obedience to this clear command in the local church look like? Unfortunately, most of us have partitioned this command in our minds and assigned it to those who are called. And not to contradict at all what Jamie was saying, agreeing wholeheartedly with what he said about this internal unction, this internal call being confirmed by an external call from a local team of elders.

But I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church and was involved heavily with the International Mission Board and in missions was something relegated to, you know, to the called ones. It's almost outsourced through the mission sending agency or through giving some financial resources to it. And then those that weren't called to engage in global missions in the local church really just never thought much about it at all in the Southern Baptist Church unless it was Lottie Moon Sunday And everyone went up to give their offering. So I really want to call us to reprogram our minds of, like Paul said, going to a foreign land is not, we're not saying everyone has to do that, but Jesus' command in the Great Commission is that we all have a role to play. We all must be obedient to it.

Obedience to Jesus' commands is non-negotiable. I mean, Do we do that with any other category of command that Christ gives us in Scripture? Do we say, well, you know, that command of Jesus is for this group of people and it's, you know, and it's not for others, But with the great commission in the local church, we've done that quite well, and I think because it makes us really, really uncomfortable to get really involved with missions, particularly cross-cultural missions to hostile areas. I love the simplicity that you've heard in our time together. I went to seminary and got a degree in church planting and foreign missions and never heard anything like Jamie, our brother, gave us this morning.

I would have gave my left arm to hear something like that. And as you hear how he's put forward where missions resides in the local church, you just want to smack yourself upside the head. It's like, duh, what were we thinking? But it's quite simple, the missionary enterprise is. You have two choices.

You can either go or you can send those who are going. I'm talking in the context of the local church. I want you to hear a famous example. A couple of folks have alluded to William Carey holding the ropes. I want to read where that's coming from.

As you've heard, William Carey is a British missionary to India at the turn of the 18th century. He's referred to as the father of modern missions. Many still marvel, reading the quote from one of his biographies, still marvel at his single-minded labor for the gospel. But I wonder how many know of his four faithful friends, friends who vowed to hold his arms up until the death. Much in the way, Aaron and Hur upheld Moses' arms in the battle against the Amalekites, friends who kept their word, friends who fiercely loved him and the god of their cause.

The night before Carrie left for India, the five contrived to get apart Rylan, Sutcliffe, Fuller, Pierce, and Carrie. They talked for the last time together of the task which lay before them. With all its uncertainty and possibility, Carey drew them into a covenant that as he went forth in the name of their master and their society, they should never cease till death to stand by him, and to this they pledged to their troth." Later in Fuller's warm mind, it took imaginative shape and he would often thus describe it until his pictorial words became transferred to the original event and the rope-holding pledge became a fixed and consecrated tradition, but the simile was Fuller's, as he once explained to Christopher Anderson. Here's the quote. "'Our undertaking to India really appeared its beginning to me somewhat like a few men who were deliberating about the importance of penetrating a deep mine which had never before been explored.

We had no one to guide us, and whilst we were thus deliberating, Carey, as it were, said, Well, I will go down if you will hold the rope. But before he descended, he as it seemed to me, took an oath from each of us at the mouth of the pit to this effect that whilst we lived, we should never let go of the rope. With entire fidelity, that covenant was kept in every case until broken by death. Like I said at the beginning, that the same level of devotion, hope, Baptist and sovereign Redeemer is required. Either way, there will be scars on your hands and exhaustion on your faces holding the ropes.

I guarantee you that in five years, if you send us out, there will be scars on our lives and on yours. So just as we count the cost, As we count the cost, I encourage you to count the cost. And if you're not at hope or sovereign, I don't mean to exclude you. You should do the same. Pastors in the room, members from other churches in the room, if you're contemplating missionary activity, count the cost.

If it only costs those that you're sending, then you're sending them poorly. It should cost you. Are you willing to give up a vacation maybe to send some more funds to the field? Are you willing to make sacrifices financially? Are you willing to adjust schedules with your time and focuses of your prayer life?

Are you willing to give up food often to fast and pray because one thing, having worked in the Muslim world, one thing I can promise you is we will not make a dent in that world without sacrifices. So what does this look like in closing? Hebrews 10, 33, and 34 come to my mind, where those going to the folks in prison joyfully accepted the plundering of our goods. If we're in need and it costs you, will you come? Or those that you send out, will you go and visit them no matter what the cost is to you?

Significant engagement of a local church's resources with less missionaries is one piece of advice for all of us. This is the ideal of, I grew up in a church where the billboard was covered with 50 stick pins and we had no clue who any of them were. I would encourage you in your church to think about maybe less missionaries but deeper involvement and relationships with them. It will benefit you and it will benefit them a lot. Reminders of the work in lots of places for your church, your Wednesday night prayer meetings, Sunday services.

If it's not held forth by the elders in the church constantly and consistently, you will forget about them. As directed by the missionaries on the ground and under the guidance of your elders, send members to help. Like Jason said, ask the missionaries on the field, what can we do to help you? Maybe it's childcare, maybe it's whatever it is, ask them and go and send members from your local church to join them for short periods of time. Maybe they'll go and join them for the long haul.

And lastly, as I've already alluded to in terms of what this looks like for the local church sending and going, is pray a lot, fast a lot, and give till it hurts. Let's pray. Oh Father, I do pray that you would help our two churches. I pray that you would help our two churches to count the cost. I pray that you would help other churches represented here, maybe even ones that listen to this and the messages from this weekend, to count them and to come out at the other end joyfully willing to pay whatever price it is that Christ would be exalted and worshiped where He is not.

Oh God, I pray that that reality would still sleep from us, would steal our thoughts, and take our money that Christ and his kingdom would be advanced. It's his name I pray, amen.