[0:00] As associational mission strategists, my responsibilities are, my philosophy is network, equip, assist, and resource the local church that is working together, and that's what the association does.
[0:13] We work together as a group of churches, and we plan things. Like, for instance, a week from tomorrow night, we will be having our annual meeting. If you've never been to one of those, come on out, and you'll see what all we do. It'll be at Fairhaven.
[0:24] But the Israeli boxes, the diapers and the children's things for that, that all comes through us and goes to the state of Tennessee, and then we ship it over to Israel.
[0:35] Those are the type of things that we do, and of course, somebody mentioned earlier that y'all went to Utah, and when you were out at Utah, you met some of our other churches that were working together. So that's one of the projects that we did, and I know Chad Grubbs, Russ's brother.
[0:50] You're Russ, right? We've got the right one. Where's Russ? Oh, here. Okay, I thought Russ was back here. I thought I saw him earlier. Russ's brother Chad is our leader that does our mission things in Montana, West Yellowstone, Montana.
[1:05] So we have projects going on all around, and this year we're starting a new project, which I got to go be a part of back in August with Amazon Missions, okay? And I'll tell you a little bit about that in just a few minutes.
[1:19] I know that you know this. I know that you know that God is at work everywhere, you know? As you see the news today as we watch the TV or read the Internet or we see newspapers, whatever, we see that there's a lot of things going on in our world, and some of those are birth pains, what we call birth pains, in the world history and in things that even Jesus said, some things that would be happening in the days to come.
[1:49] And whether or not these are the final days, I don't know. But I can tell you one thing. We're closer today than we've ever been in the return of Christ. So God is working right now. The Bible says in his last days he's going to pour out his spirit, and he's going to work among people that will work with him.
[2:05] And when we leave here today, my challenge to you is to find where God is at work in your community, in your home, at your school, wherever. Find where he's at work and then listen for the invitation to join him in that work because he will invite you to be a part of that work.
[2:24] Some of you all may have heard part of my testimony through the years, but growing up all I ever wanted to be was a motorcycle mechanic. You know, if you told me that I would be doing what I'm doing today, 40-something years ago when I graduated from high school, I would have told you you're on something you shouldn't be taking or drinking or smoking because I never would have pictured myself doing what I'm doing because I'm very much an introvert.
[2:48] And in large groups, this is a smaller group. I like you all. But large groups like First Baptist and some of those where I have to speak, it takes me outside my comfort zone. But I say that to say this.
[3:00] Sometimes God will take you outside your comfort zone. He'll take you to places, and you may hear his voice speak, and then you say, I don't know about that. But no, we argue with God.
[3:12] And you know, when you tell God, I can't, you're telling God, He can't do anything through you. So listen to the voice of God.
[3:24] And today we're going to look at a story that we find in all of the Gospels, and it's found in John chapter 6. And before we get there, though, the end of July, Brother Billy saw a presentation back in June at our pastor's meeting about this Amazon mission trip possibilities and some things that are going on in unreached villages along the Amazon River.
[3:51] There are 33,000 villages on the Amazon River. And that's just mind-boggling in itself. But 70 to 80% of them have not been reached with the Gospel of the Lord yet.
[4:02] And I had been planning on taking a group of our pastors down in March of 2024 to see what's going on. I had not been myself. But to see what was going on and invite them to invite you to come and be a part of those trips.
[4:15] But I got a call at the end of July. And the folks that organized the mission trips, they called up and they said, Hey, we've got one slot left, and if you'll come, it won't cost you anything to come.
[4:28] Come down here and just look and see what we're doing. And now this is like two weeks before the trip left. And I'm thinking, Oh, I was kind of pushing it. I got a passport. I was making all kinds of excuses. I said, No, I don't think I want to.
[4:40] But I went home and asked Donna, and she gave me permission to go. So when she did, I said, Maybe that's God working to say I can go. So I called him back up and I said, Yeah, I'll come.
[4:51] So within two weeks, I was on an airplane flying to a place in the world I'd never been before. I'd been all over South America, but never been to the Amazon River. And I was skeptical.
[5:02] I was very skeptical about what I was going to see when I got there because we're going to a village that had never heard the gospel. That's what we were told. And I'm thinking, We're going to ride a boat two days to get to a village deep within the Amazon.
[5:18] We had to have permission from the Brazilian government, first of all, to go to this village. You just can't drive to the reservation like we can at Cherokee.
[5:29] You have to have a handwritten note from the government of Brazil, which is very rare to get, but we got that. And we get to this village two days later on a boat, and we pull the boat up knowing nothing about this village.
[5:41] And we get off the boat, and we walk across. Well, we didn't start out with. Our leaders got off and walked across, and they were gone for about two hours. Remember, God is always at work around you, even in places where skeptical Christians think He cannot work.
[5:59] Our leaders came back and said, Y'all aren't going to believe what happened. About two hours later, y'all aren't going to believe what happened. And we got up there, and we started talking to this lead elder, the president or the chief of the village.
[6:09] And he really liked what we were going to do. We brought in medical supplies and glasses and stuff like that. And we were going to do a clinic, a medical clinic. And that was our getting in. And we told them we were going to do some things with the kids, some games, and do some Bible stories.
[6:22] And, you know, so he agreed to that. And then we told them we wanted to stay a couple of days. And we wanted to have an open-air meeting, you know. So he agreed to that. And after all that was over with, he said, I like what y'all are doing.
[6:35] He says, I'm going to give you a letter of writ to all 21 of my villages. Now, did you hear that? We went to a chief that was not saved, and he gave us permission to take the gospel to 21 villages along his river.
[6:55] Now, if I had the map and showed you the map and everything, you'd look at it and you'd think, it's not very far from the north village to the south village, but it's a three-day boat ride. It's a pretty good-sized place out there. Amazon's huge. So what we did was we went into that village, and the very first thing we did was we did medical clinics, and I played a doctor.
[7:11] I'm not really a doctor, but I pretended to be a doctor. You know, the old commercial says, hey, I was at the Holiday Express last night. Well, I slept on a boat last night that was bringing us down here. And the boat is not just, the boat is an old fishing trawler that's been converted into a really nice boat, so it's not like you're, you know, you're roughing it, but you're not roughing it that bad.
[7:31] But anyway, so he gave us permission to do all that, and we learned that God showed up in the villages, the four villages that we went to, before we even dreamed of going there.
[7:42] He was already there. Well, we use this thing, we speak through a translator, and we use this thing called the Gospel Cube.
[7:52] Have you all ever seen this before? The Gospel Cube just has pictures on it, and it tells about man and sin, and you open it up here, and it tells about Jesus dying on the cross, and you just go through a process with this thing as you're sharing about the life of Jesus and what salvation is all about and how God comes to man.
[8:11] And with the pictures, and you're sharing it through a translator, they're looking at you a little like, okay, I understand. What I'm going to share with you all in a few minutes, but before I get there, I'm going to share with you what happened the second day.
[8:25] The second day, we did the Gospel Cube everywhere we went to the homes. We had some response, but not a lot of response. We had some response, and we were doing a medical clinic that day, and to set up the way to the wood, we were going to build an open-air building about the size of this building, and we had these plastic chairs lined down through there, and they said, before we start the medical clinic, we had all that stuff across the front, tables, medicines, classes, things like that.
[8:51] We want to share the Gospel, so one of you all get about halfway back down the line, and one of you at the end and up the front, and we'll share the Gospel with the whole group, and this was probably about, I'd say, 60 people, 80 people, something like that.
[9:03] Most of them were adults. There were some children in there, so I was about halfway down, and I was doing it, watching the leader, doing the thing, flipping it as you go, the way you're supposed to be, and I was kind of leading along, and at the end of the presentation, they said, we'll share a little bit more about that later.
[9:17] They just shared the Gospel, just gave them, planted the seed of the Gospel. So we go through the medical clinic and everything, and then we're going to do the children's vacation Bible school, so they split us up into two groups.
[9:32] They split the kids up, they brought the kids over here, and none of the adults left. They all lined around the outside edge. There was a little, like a little, a bench all the way around the inside of this building, all the way around the door, all the way around the building here, and they just all sat there and watched.
[9:47] And the kids vacated the plastic chair, so they slid the chairs over to the middle of the building. And the kids were over here, and the adults were gathered around. So they gathered all the adults over here, and they flipped the chairs and faced that way.
[10:02] And they looked at, they said, who wants to share the Gospel? Why was it doing anything on vacation Bible school at that time? I said, I'll do it. I'll go over there and do it. So I walked over there. I had the Gospel cube, the Evangelical cube and everything.
[10:13] And I looked at it, and I looked at the group that was sitting there. There were probably about 40 adults sitting there, 35 to 40. And I looked at them, and I said, they've already heard this. I told, I translated that.
[10:23] I said, let's go a different route. So he said, okay, we'll go a different route. I said, so before I did this, I know being on missions, you need to find out if hand signals are bad.
[10:34] You know, what shapes, you know, in America we've got some bad signals. Well, all around the world are bad. I learned in the United Kingdom one time that you don't do two like this. Okay, you do two like this.
[10:46] And I don't know if you all know why, but I'm not going to explain that right now. But, you know, when you count, they said, when you count the children, don't go one, two, three, go one, two, three. Okay, I got it.
[10:57] So I got that. So I looked at my translator, and I'm kind of holding my hand behind. I says, is this good? I'm going to show you what I said. Does this mean good? He said, that'll work. He said, that'll work. I said, what about this one? He said, oh, that'll work.
[11:08] I said, what about this one? He said, just don't drop the two outside fingers. I said, what about this one? He said, don't do that one. He said, that was not a good one. I said, well, what about pinky promise? Do they know that? I don't know.
[11:20] So I said, I had a group, and this was the thing, you know, what was really amazing was white people draw a crowd. They don't see white people, you know, and I'm kind of white, you know, and the kids love to come up and blow the hair on my arm.
[11:34] They think it's cotton candy or something. They don't know what it is. So I'm standing there, and I looked at them, and I tell them who I am and where I'm from and everything, and I said, I came down here to share with you all good news. Sticky thumb up.
[11:45] Y'all do this with me. I got good news. Everybody do this with me. Come on. And everybody did just like you're doing. They're kind of hesitating. Then they did it. They said, I got good news. We got a Bible verse that says, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
[12:00] That's good news. That means when you die, you have eternal life. That's good news, right? And they're all going, you know, they're kind of agreeing with me. I said, but we got one problem. You know what?
[12:12] Stick your finger up there. I'm teaching you all how to do this so you can do this to your friends and neighbors next week. You got good news, John 3, 16, but there's one problem. You know what the one problem is? Sin. You know what sin is?
[12:22] They all go, you know, and I'm thinking, hey, I got them going here. They know what sin is. Anything you do that's wrong against your neighbor, against God, against others, that's the sin. I said, but the good news is Jesus Christ died on the cross for you.
[12:40] He's the man on the middle cross. In our Bible, it teaches about three crosses on a hill, and Jesus died on that middle cross, and it's hard to do this, but this thing here, you know. Okay?
[12:51] And so, the good news is Jesus died. The good news is Jesus died. The bad news is there's sin. I said, but if you will believe in Jesus Christ in your heart and you will ask him to forgive you of your sins, that's making, and I looked, and a lady on the front row, the first time I said, she had on a wedding band, and I did not even dream they'd have on, they had on real clothes too, you know, they weren't in Indian garb, but she was sitting there with a wedding band on, and I says, you know what this means, and I took mine off, and they shook this, it means it's a commitment.
[13:25] You're making a commitment to Jesus when you ask him to forgive you your sins, to follow him and do what he wants you to do. So that's the commitment part there, and I didn't do this in the breath, that's the commitment part, and the same lady that was in front of me, I leaned over to, and I said, do you know what happens when you make a commitment to Jesus?
[13:44] He makes a, and she put her fingers out there, so you know what pinky promise was? I said, he makes a pinky promise. He says, that he will forgive you of your sins and never let you go. Do you all understand that?
[13:56] And they're going, you know, you can kind of see there was a glaze look in some of them's eyes, but for the most part they were going, yes, I understand it. So, I got good news, God loves you, sin is bad, Jesus died for your sins, and I'm doing all this through a translator, you make a commitment to the Lord, and he promises you, you'll have eternal life, and you'll never, ever lose that eternal life.
[14:20] I said, y'all all bow your heads. So they all bowed their heads, and I led them through their sinner's prayer, you know why that goes, I acknowledge I'm a sinner, believe Jesus Christ died for me, I ask you to forgive me my sins, thank you for forgiving my sins, help me to grow in you, amen.
[14:34] They raised their, I said, before you raise your heads, I want to ask you a question. How many in here prayed that prayer for the very first time, and about more than half of them raised their hand, they did.
[14:46] I said, I can put your hands down. I said, and whenever they looked up, you could see the countenance on some of their faces was different. So that was it. I shared the gospel, and the skeptic in me, just learned that God had gone ahead and prepared the hearts of those people to receive the gospel.
[15:09] In your walk this week, if you'll share the good news, God will prepare the hearts of the people you contact, that you meet.
[15:21] And who knows, you may win the next Billy Graham to the Lord. We don't know. Well, our time was over with, and my translator says, well, we can let them go. And I said, no, no, no, wait a minute. I came all this way.
[15:34] Let's let them ask me some questions. Oh, boy, did I get some questions. I got all kinds of questions, like from where I came from, how long it took to get there, how far away was it, some really cool questions.
[15:47] And the how far away one was kind of interesting the way that I knew how far I was from Shelbyville, because that morning, during my quiet time, I had my tablet out, and my tablet has my flight program on it.
[16:00] I do fly in a little bit, too, or used to. So I could push a button, and it would give me the nautical miles from where I was sitting on that river to Shelbyville, Tennessee. And I don't know why I did this, but I thought, how far is it back to Shelbyville?
[16:12] So I pushed that button, and it told me how far it was. And I said, I wonder how far it is in kilometers, because that's what they know. And I pushed that thing, and it told me it was 5,835 kilometers from where I was to Shelbyville, Tennessee.
[16:23] Why I did that, I had no idea at that time. But the question was asked, well, how far is it? I looked at my translator, and I said, I know the answer to that question. I'm not going to tell you why or how, but it's 5,835 kilometers from here to Shelbyville where I came from.
[16:40] He looked at me, and he says, I don't know how to translate that into their language. I said, can you do it in Spanish? And I told him what it was in Spanish. He says, I can do that. And everybody in the room was going, whoa, how many hours did it take you to get there?
[16:54] About 60? So I had all kinds of questions. So, you know, this white guy, 5,800 kilometers away, spent 60 hours to get to them, and they wanted to listen.
[17:07] And they listened. Well, we did the question thing for about 30 to 45 minutes, and they asked all kinds of questions. But the coolest question out of the whole group was there was a lady sitting back here in the back.
[17:18] She was probably in her, I don't know, I couldn't tell, maybe between 30 and 40, something like that. She had a baby with her, so I knew that she was, you know, I don't know if it was a grandchild or what, but I knew that she was at least that old.
[17:31] And she raised her hand, and she said, I have one question. And she said, how did it feel when you prayed that prayer that we just prayed? And I thought, that is the coolest question.
[17:44] I said, it felt good, didn't it? And everybody's going, you know, they're shaking their heads, yeah, the weight of the world felt like it was lift off of you. And so I got to do all this through a translator. And they're going, yeah, I said, well, that's God forgiving you of the sins in your life.
[17:56] I said, but let me give you a word of caution and a word of warning. Tomorrow morning, you may not wake up feeling that good. Being a Christian is not about feelings.
[18:08] It's about faith that God's going to take care of you, that Jesus is going to keep His promise. Well, that night, I was asked, or earlier that morning, right after lunch, sometime right around that time, I was asked by the leader, hey, would you preach tonight in this open air thing?
[18:27] And I thought, well, yeah. And I'm thinking, what in the world can I do with a bunch of Indians, indigenous people, to tell a story that would make sense to them?
[18:42] And that's what we have today that we're looking at. John chapter 6, and for sake of time, I'm not going to read it all to you, but you know if you look at this, you'll see that this is the feeding of the 5,000.
[18:56] Okay? This is where Jesus actually fed the 5,000 people. 5,000 men. We don't really know how many people there were there, but when you look at this, we've got to look at about a little bit of background.
[19:08] I didn't tell them about the background to this scripture here, but the background to the scripture, if you look over in Matthew and over in, I think it's in Mark, both of those passages there, Luke doesn't do it, John doesn't do it, but I think Matthew and Mark gives the background, and the background was this.
[19:24] Do you remember who John the Baptist was? Jesus' first cousin, right? And, you know, Herod had him beheaded. Well, that happened, that happened the day or two before this feeding of the 5,000.
[19:39] And Jesus was really feeling bad about it, so what he wanted to do was he wanted to get away from the crowd. Now, I didn't tell them all this story, okay? I'm giving you background so you'll understand a little bit deeper about what Jesus was experiencing was a lot of depression, probably.
[19:55] He was grieving, probably. His first cousin who paved the way for his preaching, who baptized him, was now dead and was beheaded. So, John chapter 6, verses 1 through 13.
[20:08] After this, Jesus, after Jesus had heard of the beheading of John and was real grieved about this, he crossed the Sea of Galilee. A huge crowd was following him because they saw the signs that he was performing by healing the sick.
[20:22] Jesus went up a mountain and sat there with his disciples. Now, paint this picture for just a little while. Every time there was a big event that happened in Jesus' life, he always went to his Father to do what?
[20:35] To pray. He always went off and had a little retreat like your folks are having a retreat this Sunday somewhere. He always got along with God for this time period. So, Jesus was wanting to get along with God, with his disciples, and have a little grief.
[20:50] have a little time alone to heal within before he continued his ministry. But look at this next verse. Now, the Passover, a Jewish festival which we know a lot about, was near.
[21:03] So, when Jesus looked up and noticed a huge crowd coming toward him, he asked Philip, where will we buy bread so that these people can eat? He asked this to test him for he himself knew what he was going to do.
[21:18] And Philip answered him, 200 denarii worth of bread wouldn't be enough for each of them to have a little. And let me tell you a little bit about it. 200 denarii is six months salary to all these apostles.
[21:34] Six months salary. Now, I don't know what you make, but think about yourself. Whatever you make in six months times twelve would not be enough to feed all these people. Okay?
[21:44] Let's look a little bit further. One of his disciples, Andrew, which was one of the first ones called, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, hey, there's a little boy here that has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?
[21:57] And Jesus said, have the people sit down. There was plenty of grass in that place, so he sat them down. The men numbered about five thousand. Men numbered about, the men numbered about five thousand.
[22:09] They didn't number the women. They didn't number the children. Just the men alone numbered about five thousand. Sometimes we don't think about that. We don't let that sink in. Then Jesus took the loaves and after giving thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated.
[22:25] So also were the fish as much as they wanted. When they were filled, he told his disciples, collect the leftovers so that nothing was wasted. So they collected them and filled twelve baskets with pieces from the five barley loaves that were left over by those who had eaten.
[22:41] I did not read that whole passage to these indigenous people. I just told them the story. And the way I did it was like this. I said, anytime the Bible that we have, God's word, relates a story four times, whether it's four times in succession or four times in different gospels, it's a very, very important story to look at, to think about, to take into picture and to really understand and study about what's going on in this life.
[23:10] And as we look at this encounter today, it is recorded by all four gospels. It's recorded in Matthew 14, Mark 6, Luke 9, and here in John. The feeding of the 5,000 was a very important act.
[23:24] And what I did with them is I brought a show and tell. Okay? And I asked them, have y'all ever seen one of these? And most of them go, eh, kind of, you know, not really, but kind of.
[23:38] I said, this is what the little boy brought or something similar to that. Now, I've learned through the years doing all kinds of ministry areas, when you do a children's ministry and you bring all the little kids down here and you sit on the front, you always have to have a show and tell with them.
[23:54] You know, you have to show them things to explain the story. So I thought, you know, why don't I just show y'all and give you a little illustration about what this little boy had. Okay? Now, we don't know the size of the fish.
[24:06] We don't know the size of the barley loaves. But we're just going to pretend for just a minute. Okay? I'm not going to open these. You know what they are. They're sardines. But let's just say that he had two little fishes.
[24:19] Okay? We don't know the size of the barley loaves, but more than likely, the barley loaves were five crackers. Now, when I was a kid, five crackers and a can of sardines was a meal.
[24:34] Right? Y'all had that, right? Oh, somebody's going, ugh, no, not me. These wouldn't be good. These are mustard sauce. But just the regular oil ones are good ones. I couldn't find any regular ones. So this is what Andrew brought to Jesus.
[24:48] He went to that little boy and he got this lunch. Okay? And he brought it to Jesus. These are the actual notes that I used in that little thing, in that little encounter with him.
[25:02] And I want to share with you what this is all about. You know, I told him the feeding of the 5,000 is one of the stories that we hear in our Bible and it's repeated all four times. In all four of the Gospels, they share the same event almost identically.
[25:17] Now, I'm going chronologically through the Bible right now. I'm reading whatever it is for the day to get through the Bible. In the first nine months of the year, I was in the Old Testament.
[25:29] And if you want to, that's a train, okay. If you want to, if you want to go back and look through my Facebook, you can, you know, friend me on Facebook. You can go back to January 1. You can kind of go through the Bible chronologically.
[25:40] And I learned a lot of stuff about the Chronological Bible this year. I'm finally in the Gospels. And this morning, I was going to preach from Romans chapter 12. But, as God would have it, maybe someone here needs to hear this story.
[25:55] I got impressed to use the feeding of the 5,000. God impressed that upon my heart. God's at work. God's going before us planting the seeds.
[26:07] So these are the seeds that He gave me today to share with you. And in the Gospel stories, the feeding of the 5,000 has these things in common.
[26:17] And whenever you look at the Gospels, all four of the Gospels do not tell the story word for word exactly. Each one of the apostles, each one of the Gospel writers, saw that event from a different angle.
[26:30] You know, one of them, John just happened to see the angle and wanted to include the little boy. He's the only one of the four Gospels that included the little boy. But all these Gospels have this in common.
[26:44] They all said that Jesus was teaching in an isolated place. Okay? All four of the Gospels said, Jesus, please send these people away. We don't have enough food to feed them and it's getting late in the afternoon.
[26:57] And this is what I shared with the people. I said, all of these Gospels said that Jesus had compassion on the people. All four Gospels said, Jesus told the disciples to give them food and all of them had an excuse.
[27:13] It's too expensive. We don't have any. Jesus asked, what do we have in all four Gospels? All four Gospels said we have five loaves and two fishes. Jesus said, sit them all down in groups.
[27:29] Jesus broke and blessed the food for distribution in all four Gospels. In all four Gospels there were twelve baskets of food left over. But in one Gospel.
[27:42] The Gospel of John. We just read it. It's the only Gospel that mentioned the little boy. And the reason that is is I don't know.
[27:54] I couldn't tell you the answer of why the other guys didn't mention him. We don't know anything about the little boy. We know nothing about him. He's an anonymous character. We don't know his name.
[28:05] We don't know his age. We don't know anything about his family. We don't know where he came from. We don't know if he came alone or if he came with a group of friends. You know how friends would kind of run together sometimes.
[28:17] He could have come with a whole group of guys. But when he came his mama said, we're going to send you a sack lunch because you like to eat. And you may be gone all day so we're going to send a sack lunch with you.
[28:32] And that little boy, that little boy when approached by the apostles, he could have said, no, this is mine.
[28:42] I'm going to keep it. This is not enough for 5,000 plus people. He could have made all kind of excuses. Oftentimes, I make excuses for not sharing whatever it is the Lord wants me to share.
[28:55] Whether it's the gospel, whether it's my testimony, whether it's somebody standing on the street corner, you know, we make excuses. But the one thing that we learn in this is that this little boy may not have had all the greatest lunch in the world but he was available to allow Jesus to use his little, what little he had.
[29:22] He gave it to Jesus. And as we read the story there, it was his availability, not his abilities. It was his availability to be used by the Lord that the Lord used.
[29:35] And many in this room, you think, I can't do that. I don't know how to do that. I don't have the gifts to do that. I can't teach Sunday school. I can't do evangelism. I can't do vacation Bible school. I can't do children's ministry.
[29:47] All God wants is your availability. And he will give you the ability to do it. If the little boy had said no, he would have missed out on a great reward.
[30:01] What I did ask the team to do that was with us, I said, when I share tonight, I want you all to bring your backpacks. Okay? We all had backpacks with stuff in it.
[30:13] And whenever I ask you to stand, I want you to stand and raise your backpacks. And I got 12 of them to do this on the team. I said, the little boy gave this little sack lunch to the Lord.
[30:26] And when he left that day, this is three-fifths of a bushel or thereabouts. It's a 22-liter backpack. A bushel is about a basket size. It's recorded in the Bible.
[30:38] And when all 12 of the people in that group stood and raised these up and said, Jesus took this, fed 5,000 plus people, and this was left over, the amazement in the room was God can take the little I have, living in an indigenous village, two days journey by boat, no telling how long it would have taken to get there by canoe from the main city that we left from.
[31:12] They never leave the village. They're born there. They live there. They die there. But through the course of that next couple of days that we were out in these three villages, four villages really, we had to do one village on the way back.
[31:24] But these villages, when we were out in these villages, it was like when you shared the story of the gospel, God had already gone before us in a way that people could hear and understand and they were receptive.
[31:35] We shared the gospel over 500 times in small group and large group settings. And there were over 125 people that came to Christ. The other skeptic side of me was, well, if they come to Christ, well, how are we going to disciple people that far away?
[31:51] Well, this is amazing how God works. In the second village that I shared my testimony with and shared the hand thing with and there was about half the adults in that village that came to Christ. A lot goes on with this story, but just to kind of give it to you in a nutshell, at the end of it, we did the question thing, you know, the whole deal and everything like that.
[32:09] And there was a couple sitting on the front row right down here and I'm down on their level, I'm not up here, I'm down there on their level with them. And there was a man and woman sitting right there and he raised his hand and he says, can you come to my village and share what you just shared in my village?
[32:23] And my translator, I said, I don't know, where is it? And it's across the river. I said, I don't know that we've got time but we'll mark it to come back. And this man said, we are missionaries from the Kim Park Church out of Korea.
[32:36] They were indigenous people. We came to Christ and we're discipling folks. God had planted across the river from these 25 or 30 people at this one village that just received Christ.
[32:49] God had planted a church planter across the river. Now, across the river you can barely see the shoreline but they came across in a little boat and now they have a group of people who've come to know Jesus Christ in a village across the river that they can disciple.
[33:06] That was another skeptical thing that I was skeptical of about if we win them how we're going to disciple them. And God provided the disciples. I also learned that the other villages that we went to where we had gospel conversations and people came to Christ that there was a group down there and I did not know this until I got back to the states and it was only because I was talking to Joel Branthorse last week who was a missionary in Brazil in that region and he said Brazil has home missionaries that will go to the villages where you win people and they will disciple those people.
[33:39] So we've got three villages down there now that we've been a part of that we've shared in the gospel that people came to Christ because God is always at work. God is going before us.
[33:53] Wherever he sends us he's already there. And who knows? Share good news with people you come in contact with.
[34:06] I've kind of jumped all around here what I was going to say but I did the good news thing with them that night when I was going through all that. But this is an amazing story.
[34:19] The impossible happened through a kid that was willing to give his little lunch to the Lord. And could you imagine what happened when he got home that night?
[34:29] Mom you're not going to believe what we got. We got food for a year. And I don't know that he took the food back and we don't know what happened to the food or anything like that. But just the fact that God used that little boy Dwight L. Moody once said in a sermon he said the world now listen to this the world has yet to see what God can do with a man and I say or a woman fully concentrated to him and Dwight L. Moody said by God's help I aim to be that man.
[35:04] The world has yet to see what God can do to a person who's fully devoted fully consecrated and willing to allow God to work through him or her.
[35:15] The world has yet to see what God can do in raising up the next Billy Graham and the next person that you share Christ with may be that person because Billy Graham came to Christ through the ministry of Dwight L. Moody and three generations later Billy Graham came to Christ when you look at the way that it all transpired out but the man that led Dwight L. Moody to the Lord was his Sunday school teacher in his place of work during a weekday.
[35:49] God works in days other than Sunday and Wednesday. We've just got to be willing to listen and obey and experience God at work.
[36:02] Will you bow your heads and your hearts with me as we pray? Amen. Father, I don't know who's here. I don't know who's listening by way of Facebook, Lord, or by way of YouTube, Lord, but I know that there are some folks that you're talking to now, Lord, and I don't know what you're telling them.
[36:20] I don't know if you're asking them to step forward for salvation, for rededication, for joining this church, for missions or ministry services, Lord. Father, I just ask whatever it is that you speak to them in a way that they would obey, that they would obey you and follow you and experience you in their life and in their work.
[36:40] Father, I thank you for the opportunity to share with those people on the Amazon and I look forward to going back. But Lord, right now, we're here. We're in Shelbyville, we're in Wartreys, Lewisburg, Tullahoma, Murfreesboro,!
[36:55] Middle Tennessee. We're here in the United States, Lord. Acts 1-8 says, be witnesses starting at home. And Father, may we be witnesses starting at home.
[37:06] Lord, during this moment of invitation, Lord, if there's a decision that needs to be made, I pray, Lord, that you just work in the lives and the hearts of those that are here. If there's a public decision that needs to be made, Lord, I pray that you help them to step out and make that public.
[37:20] But more than anything else, Lord, as we do business right now with you during this time, help us to remember that there is good news. You gave the good news, Lord. May we be about sharing the good news where you choose to place and plan us.
[37:36] Thank you, Father. Thank you. In Jesus' name. Amen. Our hymn of invitation, I'll lead it if you want to stay back there. Amen.
[38:01] Amen.
[38:31] Amen. Thank you.