Latest / Beyond the Sermon / Let All the Nations Praise You! sermon feat. Don Parsons

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Let All the Nations Praise You! sermon feat. Don Parsons · Beyond the Sermon

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You're listening to Beyond the Sermon, the podcast of First
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Methodist Church in Collingswood, NJ.
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On our podcast, the goal is not just to share the sermons we've
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preached, but to go beyond the sermon and talk about what we're
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learning and what God is doing in US and in our community.
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fumccollingswood.org. Thanks for listening.
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I'm on. This is from Psalm 6-7.
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May God be gracious to us and bless us, and make his face
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shine on us, so that your ways may be known on earth.
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Your salvation among all nations.
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May the peoples praise you God, may all the peoples praise you.
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May the nations be glad and sing for joy.
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For you rule the peoples with equity and guide the nations of
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the earth. May the peoples praise you God,
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May all the peoples praise you. The land yields its harvest.
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God our God bless us. May God bless us still, so that
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all the ends of the earth. Will fear him.
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Thank you, Mackenzie, and I think it's time for our kids to
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go to junior church, and I'm going to I'm going to before we
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begin, I'm going to ask the Lord to bless this time, bless the
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opening of His Word together. Our gracious Heavenly Father, I
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thank you for the privilege of being in your church, being here
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in Collingswood with your people.
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I thank you for the heritage of this church, and I thank you for
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each person who is here today. I pray, Father, as we open your
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word, as we hear stories of what you're doing in the world today,
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Father God, may you work in your might, in your power.
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May you speak to our hearts. And Father, we know that the
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evil one wants to take away the seeds that are planted, and we
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pray against him right now in the name of Christ.
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And now I pray, Father, that the words of my mouth and the
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meditations of my heart, that they would be acceptable to you,
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Oh Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.
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Amen. Amen.
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Well, it is always a great opportunity for me to be back
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here at First Church. I love coming here.
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I love looking out into the congregation or, or spending
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time just interacting with people and seeing so many
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familiar faces, seeing faces that are new as well.
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Both of them are a blessing. And so it's always great to be
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here. This church played a huge part
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in my life, in the life of my family.
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When I think about the, the, the man of God, that the, the, the
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ministry that God has given to me and my wife and my brother,
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who's a pastor as well, and, and just our whole family, I come
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back and I think about this church.
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So if anything good that you see here in my ministry, you can,
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you can praise the Lord because I think this church played a big
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role. If there's something that you
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see that you don't like, talk to Dick, it's his fault.
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And that's true, right, Dick partnership in the gospel.
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That's that is one of the things that I absolutely love.
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We've been in ministry. My wife Esther and I Esther, of
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course, isn't able to be here today or I would have introduced
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her already. She just isn't able to be here.
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Our our four adult children, two of four adult children.
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You're not going to believe this tore their AC LS in the last six
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months, not one kid, but two kids tore their AC LS.
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And my adult daughter Rebecca, 30 years old, who has three
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kids, our grandkids. Esther has had to really step up
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to the to the plate when it comes to caring for grandkids
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during this time of her recovery.
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She had surgery about a month and a half two months ago.
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And so she's on the mend, my daughter.
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But you've obviously you've got a lot of responsibility that you
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have to do when when family is is in need like that.
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But this church, like I said, has played a big role.
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You have been partners in the gospel with us and we are
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extremely grateful for that partnership.
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If we were to open up Philippians chapter 1, and
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that's not the focus, The focus is what Mackenzie read a moment
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ago. It's Psalm 67.
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But if we opened up Philippians chapter one, we would see Paul
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talking to the church, writing to the church in Philippi, and
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saying, I am so grateful for the partnership of the gospel that
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we have together. And he says in there that we
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share in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ together in that
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ministry. And so the stories that I can
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tell you today and will tell you today, and the things that God
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is doing that I will tell you today.
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I don't want you to receive them as if there's something distant
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and far away. They are part of you as well.
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Because the grace that I'm seeing God do and, and, and the
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things that God is doing in places like Ukraine as well as
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in Central Asia through our ministry and, and, and in other
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places that were involved in ministry, Israel as well,
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working with Russian speakers in Israel in the last, in the last
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year and a half, especially Esther and I have been involved
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with that. All of those things, all of the
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great stories, all of the things that God is doing, all the doors
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he's opening, all of the people who are hearing the gospel and
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coming to him and being baptized, all of the churches
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that are being established. We praise his name for his
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grace, but it's not stories that are far away.
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It's stories of us, the body together.
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Praise the Lord that we have the opportunity to be and to serve
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together. God's heart beats for the
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nations. Amen.
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His heart beats for the nations. A time will come when there will
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be people from every tribe, tongue, language and nation that
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will gather around the throne and we look forward to that day.
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Let the nations praise you. That's the focus of this song is
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to bring people to that place of worshiping our Lord and Savior
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from all nations, all peoples. If you can go to the next slide.
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I just want to repeat some of the some of the verses that
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Mackenzie read for us earlier. The first 3 verses.
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May God be gracious to us and bless us.
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Make his face to shine upon us. Say, LA, that your ways may be
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known on the earth, your salvation among the nations.
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May the peoples praised you. Oh God, may the may all the
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peoples praise you. Amen.
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Go to the next slide. I want to introduce you to
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Yeliana. Yelena is a young girl who is
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living in Poland. In the last four years, the war
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in Ukraine, Esther and I have spent a majority of our time
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there, probably at least two years out of the last four, four
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and a four and a quarter or so we've spent in Poland helping
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serving Ukrainian refugees. And our team there, we're
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actually serving alongside not other Americans, but other
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Ukrainians, Ukrainians who most of them themselves are refugees,
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but they're ministers of the gospel who say it doesn't matter
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that I'm a refugee. It doesn't matter that I've lost
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my home. It doesn't matter that I've had
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to run. I'm going to serve the Lord
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where I have been planted. I'm not a missionary.
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I'm not a, I'm not a refugee. I'm a missionary because God has
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placed me here. So here's Yelena.
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Yelena is a young girl from the city of Bucha.
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Now maybe you remember from the news the very first months of
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the war. Bucha is a sub suburb of the
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city of Kiev. Kiev and Bucha is a place where
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a lot of the worst atrocities took place.
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At the beginning of the war, Yelena and her mother were able
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to escape Bucha before any of that started.
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They escaped out one side of Bucha as Russian troops were
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coming in on the other side, and Yelena went to the border of
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Ukraine and stood in line together with her mother for
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probably 3 or 4 days, like many people did in the early days of
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the war. Lines of cars, lines of buses,
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lines of pedestrian traffic getting off of trains and buses
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and so forth, trying to cross that border into Poland and some
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of them to go further into Europe.
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Yelena, as you can see, she's on crutches and, and actually in
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this particular picture, she's at an art therapy class at our
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refugee center in the city of Warsaw.
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In total, we've served probably about 100 to 110,000 people in
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Poland in the last four years, Ukrainian refugees through our
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refugee centres that we have there.
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And Yelena is just one of many. But, but when you start talking
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about numbers, you say 100,000, you say 120,000, you talk about
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the number of, of people who've been displaced inside Ukraine.
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And you have to remember that each person, each, each number
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is represented by individual people.
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So Yelena and her mom in Poland. And it was discovered that
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Yelena had a congenital back issue, some problems that she
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needed to get taken care of. So since she's come to Poland,
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to Warsaw, she's had multiple surgeries.
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And you can see here in this picture, she was having, she
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she's, she's dealing with some of the pain and issues.
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Actually, she was recovering in this picture.
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This was in January, a year ago, actually two years ago, in
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January, 2 years ago. And I was there visiting and I
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saw Yelena and our team saw Yelena and they looked at her
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and they go, You were having surgery in December, weren't
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you? Yeah, Yeah, I had surgery.
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You didn't receive one of our Gift of Hope gift boxes.
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And there's these, these gift boxes kind of like Samaritan's
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Purse does, where they have toys and prizes and different kinds
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of candies inside a box. And together inside that box is
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a children's Bible that children are able to read and learn about
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Jesus. And they looked at her and they
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said, you weren't here for that outreach at Christmas time.
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Can we give you a box? We have a few left.
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Can we give you one of those children's Bibles?
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And she goes, oh, no, no, no, you don't need to do that.
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Galena continues. And she says, you, you don't,
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you don't have to do that. Because my friend from from my
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Ukrainian friend, she knew that I wasn't able to come.
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She knew that I was laid up at home.
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So she grabbed one of those boxes.
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She grabbed one of those those Bibles and she brought it to me.
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And then Yolana continues. She says you are not going to
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believe what was in that Bible. She's she's talking to me.
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Think about that. You know, she says she starts
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sharing about Jesus and who he was and the miracles that he
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did. And she said, and then they took
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him and they nailed him to a cross.
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They killed him and they buried him.
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And get this, he rose from the dead three days later and she's
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beaming ear to ear. We have the opportunity to share
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the gospel with children and teens and moms and dads and
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senior citizens in a context of war.
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And you think to yourself, well, these Ukrainian refugees, they
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should be just kind of hiding in a corner.
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And those that those that are trying to serve and minister and
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so forth, I would think that they would just want to hide.
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But instead, they're sharing the gospel.
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They're handing out tracts, they're handing out boxes,
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they're handing out Bibles like this to Yelena and thousands of
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others. Since the war in Ukraine began,
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Mission Eurasia has been a part of the church response, has been
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able to distribute well over 300,000 food boxes all over
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Ukraine, Poland to help serve Ukrainian families.
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And together with those food boxes distributing over 2
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million pieces of literature, primarily New Testaments and
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children's Bibles, God is opening up doors that we would
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have never expected. It's really quite amazing how
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God is working in the midst of a war through His church in
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Ukraine. I could share with you story
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after story after story. I've mentioned this, I think in
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the past when I've been here, your typical Ukrainian worship
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service is at least two hours long.
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And if you're ready for that, I can go.
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You want to do that? Yeah.
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I know You have another church coming in here.
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I heard someone say no. Oh, OK.
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All right, fine, fine, fine. But these kinds of stories,
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stories of impact, stories of the heart of God, these are
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tied, I see, to three things. Three things.
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It's tied to the the thought that God's people go.
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They hear God's words. It says here am I who whom shall
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I send and who will go for us and Americans and Ukrainians and
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Filipinos and Latin Americans and Africans and Europeans.
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They say, here am I send me, use me.
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Use me in your hand, Lord. That's the first thing it's tied
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to. The stories of impact are tied
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to something else. When God's people pray, that's
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when Collingswood First Church prays and other churches all
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over the United States, then around the world and in Ukraine
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and so forth. And the third thing is when
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God's people give, send, partner like you have with me, like you
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have with I see Bob Alber in the back today also someone who this
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church has stood behind for many, many years in ministry.
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So when God's people go, when God's people pray or when God's
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people send and partner, and when one of those things is not
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in place, when one of those things is weak, missions is
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weak. And as I already said, God's
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heart beats for the nation's. He longs to see a people
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worshipping before him. And that's the promise that we
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focus and we look at when we open.
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Psalm 67, if you can go to the next slide, Psalm before Psalm
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67, Revelation set Revelation 7. This is this is what we long
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for. This is what we hope for.
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This is what everything is aimed at.
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After this I looked and before the throne was a great multitude
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that no one could count from every nation, tribe, people,
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language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.
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And if we go further in the Book of Revelation, we find that a
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time will come when all of God's people will gather around the
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throne and he will wipe away every tear, and there will be no
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more illness, and God will be our God and we will be his
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people. Then you go to the next, next
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slide, please. This is the emphasis of Psalm 67
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as well. These are the center 3 verses of
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Psalm 67, and I'll show you in the next slide.
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Not yet. I'll show you in the next slide
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how this whole Psalm is organized.
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These middle verses are the apex or the climax of the entire
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passage, the entire chapter. May the peoples praise you, O
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God, may all the peoples praise you.
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May the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you rule the
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peoples justly, and you guide the nations of the earth.
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Say LA, may the peoples praise you.
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Oh God, may all the peoples praise you.
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There's 2 orange verses. As you can see, they're actually
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the exact same thing this psalmist set up.
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If you can go to the next slide in a very unique way.
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It's called a chiastic structure.
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And I'm not here to try to educate in all of that, but this
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is really cool. This entire Psalm, you have the,
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the parts on the far outside, they all feed into the middle.
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And then the middle is the very most important.
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And the middle says, may the nations rejoice because God will
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judge the nations and he will guide the nations.
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This is the heart of God who wants to come to that place.
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And I know that you want to come to that place as well where the
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nations sing for joy, where God rules justly, where the nations
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are guided by his, his precepts and his direction.
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This is the center. This is our direction, this is
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the heart of God where he's directed.
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But there's a way to get there, and that's the outside verses A,
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and then the bottom A as well. If you could go to the next
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slide, Psalm 67, one and two, May God be gracious to us and
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bless us and make His face shine upon us.
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Say La. This is where this chapter
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begins. It's a prayer and it's a request
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to God for something. Be gracious to me.
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Be gracious to us. When we think about the grace of
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God, what do we think about? We think about what God has done
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through Christ. We think about salvation that we
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have In the Old Testament. In Exodus 34, we can read that
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God speaks of himself when he speaks to Moses, the Lord, the
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Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger,
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abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love
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to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin.
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God has been gracious to us when we deserve judgement, when we
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deserve hell. He's been gracious to us and has
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extended His grace to us through Christ.
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But he doesn't just extend grace, He extends many blessings
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by His grace. Material blessings.
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Family, Church. I was just talking last night to
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Bill and and Carol and telling them that this church was a
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church where I first understood and learned about what it means
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to have and to be a church family.
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A church family was right here in this place build a foundation
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for me and my understanding of what it means to be, to be, to
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to be in church, to be connected to the church.
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The church isn't just a place where you go on a Sunday, but
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it's family, it's relationships, it's community, it's the body of
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Christ. This is a huge blessing that we
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share brothers and sisters in Christ, May God be gracious to
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us. May God bless us and the last
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one the the psalmist praise and make his face to shine upon us,
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you know, in the in the Muslim world and and we lived and
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served in Kazakhstan and Central Asia for many years, as well as
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in Ukraine previously. The ministry that we actually
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called into mission Eurasia to do is related to helping
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mobilize the church, equip the church in Eurasia to reach out
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to unreached people groups. And that means going to places
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like Central Asia, going to places like Kazakhstan where
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Islam is the primary religion. And you know the Muslim God, he
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is not a personal God. Not a God that is intimate with
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His creation, with his people. They wouldn't even be considered
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His people, as it were. And here we read.
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May his face shine upon us. The very face of God.
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You know a baby when he's crying, when she's crying and
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you're holding them in your hands and, and, and their, their
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eyes are closed and all of a sudden they get a glimpse of mom
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or they get a glimpse of grandpa.
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And, and all of a sudden their countenance completely changes
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as they get that link, that connection eye to eye, face to
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face. This is the kind of connection,
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relationship that God wants to have with us throughout Psalms.
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We could spend a lot of time on this, but I won't.
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Today at Psalm 8915, here's a place where we see this, this
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concept of His face. Blessed are the people who
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acclaim you and worship you. Psalm 8915, who walk, O Lord, in
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the light of Your face. What a way to walk, what a way
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to live to wake up mourning by mourning, having the very face
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of God the Creator shining down upon you, upon me, walking
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throughout our day with our God, close and close relationship
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with us. This word face is actually the
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same word that's translated in other psalms as presence.
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So this idea of God's face is really talking about His
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presence, His closeness, his intimacy with us.
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Psalm 21, six says surely you have granted him unending
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blessings and have made him glad with the joy of your presence,
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which could be read with the joy of your face.
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The Westminster Confession says that the chief end of man in the
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Shorter Catechism is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
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This this talks about us finding deep satisfaction with our God
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in close, intimate relationship with Him now and throughout all
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eternity. We are not involved in a
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religion. We are involved in a personal
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relationship with a living God who loves us and gave himself up
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for us. Psalm 27 One thing do I ask of
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the Lord? This only one thing do I seek,
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that I may dwell in the House of the Lord all the days of my life
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and gaze on the beauty of the Lord.
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One thing, one thing of all the things the psalmist could ask
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for, he's asking for that intimacy, that closeness with
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God. And in that very same Psalm,
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just a few verses later, God responds to the psalmist and
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says, my heart says seek his face, seek my face.
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God is saying your face, O Lord. Then, then the psalmist
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responds, I will seek. God is saying, seek my face.
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I love you. I want to have a close intimate
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relationship with you. And then the next slide, we can
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see that in the New Testament, this is ultimately manifested in
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who in Jesus Christ, First Corinthians 4/6 For God, who
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said let light shine out of darkness, made his light to
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shine in our hearts, to give us the light of the knowledge of
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God's glory displayed in who in the face of Christ Jesus.
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God has blessed us. He has been gracious to us, He
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has blessed us, and we ask and plead that He would make His
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face to shine upon us. And God's desire is that His
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face would shine upon all of the peoples of the earth.
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The next slide, please, This past this past May, you can go
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forward. 2 slides actually. Now one more great.
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This past May, I had the opportunity to go back to
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Central Asia, and like I said, I've been doing a number of
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things related to Central Asia. Was just in Turkey at a Central
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Asian consultation a few weeks ago and it, and it's amazing to
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see how God is making his face to shine upon the people of
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Central Asia, one of the most unreached regions of the world.
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When I was there. I, I don't, I don't want to show
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a lot of faces because that has its own risks.
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So that's why you see a picture of my back in the back of the of
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the young believer that I was speaking with at the time up on
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that hillside. And while I was there.
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It was amazing. We had served in Kazakhstan,
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served in Kazakh ministry, reaching out to Kazakhs nominal
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Muslim peoples to help them to understand who Jesus is,
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Islamosuch to introduce them to Christ and so forth.
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And here I am going back 15 years later.
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I've been back a couple of times since.
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But it's amazing to see what God is doing.
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Kazakhs as a people group are still considered unreached.
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Of a country of 20 million, there's still only about maybe
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5050 thousand. Some say much less, some say
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much more. But even if it's a hundred
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100,000 or if it's 20,000, it's still not very many when you
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look at the number of 20 million, right?
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It's still a very few believers in that country.
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And yet Kazakh brothers and sisters in Christ are hearing
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the call of God who says, whom shall I send and who will go for
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us? And they're saying here am I
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send me and I met with Kazaks who were going into villages,
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Uyghur villages to share the gospel.
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And you think, maybe you think to yourself, I've heard the name
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Uyghur. Maybe you have, maybe you
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haven't. Uyghurs are a Muslim people
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group within China. There's about 12:15 million, I'm
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not sure the exact number inside China.
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And they are a persecuted people group.
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They've actually set up gulags and re education camps inside
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China for the Uyghur people because they want them to be.
26:24
They want them to forget about all of their Muslim background
26:27
and just become Chinese. Well, in Kazakhstan, there's
26:32
about 400,000 Uyghurs and they've lived there a long time
26:36
because they share Kazakhstan shares a border with China.
26:38
So they're on the same border and there's 400,000 of them
26:41
there and they are very unreached.
26:44
And this Kazakh missionary sent to work among the Uyghurs shared
26:49
a story with me. We spent time the in a couple of
26:53
Uyghur villages while we were there.
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And he said, you know, one of the ways that God has been
26:57
opening up the doors here is through miracles.
27:00
There was a young girl. She was 12 years old.
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She got sick, her kidneys started to fail and she started
27:07
to swell up and she went going to doctor after doctor after
27:10
doctor and different Muslim Muslim imams would pray for her
27:14
and others, other things like that.
27:16
And nothing they would do could help this 12 year old girl to
27:19
get better. And she was blowing up bigger
27:21
and bigger and bigger because she couldn't get rid of any
27:23
fluids in her in her system. The doctor says we can't do
27:26
anything for her and she's going to die.
27:29
Missionary, one of those Kazakh missionaries came to this house,
27:34
heard about their situation, came to pray for this girl.
27:39
And while she was there, she left behind an Injeel that would
27:42
be a New Testament in the in the the the Muslim tradition that
27:46
their understanding of a of a New Testament.
27:48
The Injeel Sharif left it behind.
27:52
The family just kind of put it off to the side for a couple of
27:54
days as the daughter kept getting worse.
27:57
And then one day, mom in the kitchen just not able to figure
28:02
out what to do for her daughter who's dying in just the other
28:05
room, opened up this New Testament and began to read.
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And right at the time when she was reading, the girl in the in
28:14
the other room had a vision and she sees Jesus.
28:18
She gets to see Jesus, the face of God.
28:23
And he says to her, simple words, your healing isn't there.
28:29
And he pointed right into the kitchen, right where mom was
28:33
sitting reading the New Testament.
28:36
This 12 year old girl got up from her bed, walked into the
28:39
kitchen, and God began a process of healing.
28:42
Over the next week, she became completely better.
28:45
And this story went all over town.
28:50
Her family all came to Christ. Today there's over 200 believers
28:55
among that Uyghur community because of this miracle that got
28:58
allowed and this missionary who went from Kazakh peoples, the
29:02
face of God moving among the nations.
29:08
Praise the Lord. If you can go to the next slide.
29:13
We just we, we focused on that first verse.
29:17
May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to
29:20
shine upon us. Say la, say la means stop and
29:23
think about it often in the West we want to put a period right
29:28
there, right? Be gracious to me, bless me,
29:31
make your face to shine upon me, and I'm going to enjoy the rest
29:34
of my life. Period, end of discussion to say
29:37
la, stop and think about it comma, not even a period.
29:42
And there's a reason for the blessings that God gives to us,
29:45
that your ways may be known on the earth and your salvation
29:50
among the nations. That your ways may be known on
29:55
the earth and your salvation among the nations.
30:00
Your ways. I've underlined some keywords.
30:03
As you can tell in the passage, The ways of God are not our
30:07
ways. For my thoughts are not your
30:09
thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.
30:11
Isaiah 55 says, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so
30:17
are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts are higher
30:21
than your thoughts. There's a great book that some
30:25
people don't like the title, but I, I, I just love this title.
30:29
It's by, it's by a missionary by the name of Nick Ripkin.
30:31
And it's called the Insanity of God.
30:34
And you think the insanity of God.
30:37
The idea of the book is real basic.
30:40
God is at work in places around the world and in nations,
30:45
through trials, through persecution, through
30:47
difficulties, through chaos. Those are the places, some of
30:53
the key places on the planet where God is at work.
30:56
His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our
31:00
thoughts. If you could go to the next
31:02
slide, Mission Eurasia has been in existence.
31:09
It's the organization that I work with, a Slavic mission
31:12
organization. Esther and I are the only
31:14
members of the field ministries team that are actually
31:18
Americans, as it were. No, we actually are the only
31:21
Americans on the team. The rest of them are Moldovans
31:23
and Ukrainians and Russians and Central Asians and so forth.
31:27
Mission Eurasia has been an organization that has served in
31:29
the former Soviet Union for 35 years.
31:32
And this picture is the the main headquarters in the city of
31:35
Erpine, which is right next to Bucha.
31:38
It's right next to that town I was telling you about before.
31:42
Ukraine has been a place where the gospel has moved from in
31:47
powerful ways in the last 35 years.
31:50
Most people don't know this because we don't talk about this
31:52
on the news. We don't hear about this on the
31:54
news. But Ukraine is the place in
31:57
Europe where the church before the war was growing faster and
32:01
was more missional than pretty much any other European country.
32:05
The gospel to from evangelical churches moving in powerful
32:10
ways. So what is happening today in
32:12
Ukraine as this war continues. Next slide is that I believe
32:16
that it's a spiritual battle that's the mission Eurasia
32:19
headquarters. It was destroyed during the
32:21
liberation of the city of Erpene.
32:24
But the gospel continues to go forward and I'll talk about that
32:26
in a moment. Go to the next slide just to let
32:30
you understand that this war that's happening in Ukraine is a
32:33
war more so, Well, I shouldn't say more.
32:37
So it's equally a, a spiritual battle as much as it is a battle
32:41
of bombs and soldiers and drones and all of that kind of stuff.
32:46
When Russian troops took occupation of the Mission
32:48
Eurasia headquarters, they went into the warehouse, took all of
32:52
the scriptures that were in there, threw them out on the
32:54
street so that they could put their armaments inside the the
32:58
warehouse to store them. And they burned all of those
33:01
Bibles. And most of what you see there
33:03
are Gospels of John. This is what the the Russian
33:07
Federation is doing inside Ukraine.
33:10
Next slide. I think I shared some of this
33:12
when I was here a couple of years ago.
33:14
This is this is the Church of a friend of mine, a Church of 800
33:18
people in the city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine.
33:23
And on a worship service six months into the war, worship
33:27
team on the platform, one of those big digital screens
33:29
behind, bigger than the one we have here.
33:31
And they're standing on the platform singing songs.
33:34
And all of a sudden a Russian troop, Russian troops walk down
33:37
the aisle onto the platform, stand in front of the worship
33:40
team and say, this service is disbanded.
33:42
And you all have to go down to fellowship hall and you have to
33:45
be registered. That's the reality of this war.
33:49
Russia has destroyed over 700 churches or confiscated them
33:53
since the war began in the occupied territories.
33:57
Next slide. That's this is the same church
34:00
that you just saw the inside during a worship service.
34:03
They confiscated the building, Church of 800, tore the cross
34:07
off the top of the building, repainted the outside, and now
34:10
it's a cultural youth center where young people can go to
34:14
learn, dance and to have, as they call it, a disco club and
34:17
all of those different kinds of things.
34:20
Next slide. But I want to say that God's
34:24
ways are not our ways. This is a group of believers
34:30
standing outside of a church in Ukraine that was hit by a
34:36
missile. And all the believers come out,
34:38
came out to the church after it was hit and they started, they
34:42
covered up pieces of it, as you can see with with tarps and so
34:45
forth. These pictures are actually
34:47
taken from a video as young people in a war with their
34:54
church having just been hit, singing worship and praise
34:57
songs, and yet young people raising their hands, praising
35:02
the Lord, thanking the Lord for his faithfulness and his
35:05
goodness. I don't know if you know this,
35:11
you sure you don't, but the evangelical church in Ukraine
35:15
has made such a huge impact. About 60% of the Ukrainian
35:21
population surveyed said that they see how the evangelical
35:25
church, not the Orthodox, not the Catholic Church, but the
35:27
evangelical church, the Protestant church, is working to
35:31
help serve the needs of Ukrainian people both, both with
35:35
humanitarian needs as well as trauma care, spiritual care and
35:39
so forth. 60% of the population sees what the Ukrainian church
35:41
is doing and 20% of them say, if I was invited to go to a church,
35:45
I would go. More people have been baptized
35:49
in Ukraine in the in the evangelical church in the last
35:52
in the last years, in the last four years than there were in
35:55
the years leading up to the war. Because God's ways are not his
35:59
ways. Next slide that your ways may be
36:05
known on the earth your salvation among the nations
36:10
Ukrainian Church in the midst of great difficulty in the midst of
36:15
great trial in the midst of great pain is not only serving
36:19
God in in strange in what would be strange ways, but they are
36:22
sharing about his goodness. As first Chronicles 16 says they
36:26
are singing to the Lord all the earth and they are telling of
36:29
his salvation from day-to-day. Did you know that the story of
36:35
Psalm 67 is really a story of all of scripture.
36:39
If you could go to the next slide all the way from cover to
36:43
cover, this idea of of God's wanting to bless his people for
36:50
a purpose that they might bless the nation's.
36:54
It's in the Great Commission in the New Testament and it's found
36:57
throughout the Old Testament and here in Genesis, we can see it.
37:00
Genesis 12. He says to Abraham, I will make
37:03
you a great nation and I will do what I will bless you Abraham,
37:08
but I'm blessing you for a purpose so that all the peoples
37:13
of the earth will be blessed through you.
37:17
This is God's heart. This is this is God's desire to
37:21
make, to bless us, to be gracious to us, to make his face
37:24
to shine upon us so that the nation's will know that's our
37:30
purpose. That's the heart of God.
37:34
And So what do we do Next slide? When we look at this next slide
37:38
and we think and realize what the reality in this world is 3.2
37:44
plus billion people with little or no access to the gospel of
37:49
Christ. When I say unreached, I'm not
37:52
talking about your neighbor who hasn't come to Christ yet.
37:55
I'm talking about people in places where they don't have
37:58
access to a believer to a church.
38:02
Typically they don't have access to A to the scriptures in their
38:05
heart language. One in three, every third person
38:11
on the planet would be in this category of unreached with very
38:16
little if any access to the gospel.
38:20
But God has blessed us. He's made his he's been gracious
38:23
to us. He's made his face to shine upon
38:25
us so that the nations would know.
38:29
Brothers and sisters, this is what God is calling us to be
38:32
involved with to be ones who send, who go, who pray, who
38:41
partner and support. How is God going to do that in
38:45
you in this church more and more moving forward.
38:52
Next slide. These are the last verses.
38:55
I'm not going to spend a lot of time focusing on them.
38:59
Then the land will yield its harvest and God, our God will
39:02
bless us and the, and God will bless us in the ends of the
39:05
earth will fear him. Very similar to the first
39:09
verses. Basically it's this.
39:12
I bless you so that you will be a blessing to the nations and
39:16
the nations will come and worship him and, and all of that
39:20
stuff that I did, I will bless you even more so that the
39:24
nation's more nations can hear, more people can hear and more
39:27
people can be brought into the family, into the Kingdom.
39:31
That's what this is about. That's what these last verses
39:35
are telling us. Next slide, please.
39:39
This is our last slide. Just a reminder of those first
39:42
verses. And maybe, maybe as you look at
39:46
these verses today, ask yourself, what does God want
39:51
from me? God has blessed me.
39:54
God has been gracious to me. He's made His face to shine upon
39:57
me. What does that mean to me today?
40:00
How can I respond? What can I do?
40:02
What can we do as a church? And when you think about the
40:07
unreached of the nations, ask yourself, God, how can you use
40:11
me to bless the nations? How can you use our church to
40:15
bless the nations? May God be gracious to us and
40:19
bless us. Make his face to shine upon us,
40:23
Sayla comma, that your ways may be known on the earth, and your
40:29
salvation among all nations. Let's stand and pray together.
40:35
Our gracious Heavenly Father, I just thank you.
40:38
Thank you for your blessings. Thank you for your truth.
40:40
Thank you for your word. Thank you for opening it up to
40:43
us this morning. And I pray that you would speak
40:47
to each of us. Speak to me as well.
40:49
Father, how would you use us? You have blessed us richly.
40:54
Open up our eyes to see and understand and know those
40:57
blessings deeply today. And may we understand that you
41:01
don't call us to hold on to those blessings and just sit on
41:04
sit on them as it were. But you call us to take those
41:07
blessings, to use those blessings to bless the nations
41:11
that that that your truth be known among the nations.
41:14
So, Father, do that among us today.
41:18
In the precious name of our Lord and Savior Jesus, I pray, Amen.