To The Uttermost

They are missionaries with Campus Crusade for Christ, and I've asked them if they'd share for about 15 minutes or so just about the ministry that they're involved with. They've been involved in Campus Crusade for a lot of years. Mark is currently one of the directors, or the director, of the master studio for the Jesus film. If you're familiar with the Jesus film, he'll tell you how many languages it's already been translated into.

Mark's responsible for at least the African and the Asian nations translating it into those languages, finding the actors. You remember a while back we received a newsletter from Mark saying that he was going to be going into an area to find some actors for one of the Arabic languages that was in a Muslim country, and it was very secretive. They had to go in, and he'll talk about that. We prayed for him because of the danger of the trypanaut.

He'll share some about that and just how we can continue to pray. It's always a blessing when they're local to have them come by and just kind of update us on what's going on. Many of you haven't ever seen them before, met them before. Our fellowship as a whole sponsors them, helps to sponsor them. You're actively involved. When he shares these figures and the numbers of languages and the nations they've reached

and how many millions have responded to the gospel, you have a part in that. You know the old Ray Bolt song, thank you for giving to the Lord. When you get to heaven, there's going to be people walking up to you that are going to say that because you helped support that ministry here. So Mark, why don't you come on up and share with us a little bit about what's happening.

Good morning. Nancy is here, and she's going to be sharing a song in a moment. Will and Luke are in Children's Church. Will is seven, and Luke will be six next month, and Amy, I hope, is asleep in child care.

We can also get these into closed countries like China or the Muslim countries a lot easier, and also we can put this onto a radio broadcast, a six-episode radio broadcast that could be beamed into some of these harder-to-reach countries. We're working with about 700 mission organizations now in the world. That's exciting. It's really gratifying for us to be able to make this tool available for so many different people who are in all parts of the world.

until high school that I understood for the first time, and I can remember how excited I was and how much I wanted that relationship with God and how I asked Christ into my life and how exciting that was for me. But there are so many places in the world that haven't had yet one chance to hear. You can imagine the Soviet bloc countries, what it was like growing up there. Can you imagine, let's say you were a 60-year-old woman, you'd grown up in Romania, were not allowed to go to church or to have a Bible.

I also saw how they will tie the equipment to the back of a bicycle to get to their showings. Some people use boats to take the film. This is on the Ganges River in India. There's a missionary working with Indian Christians, and they have this boat called the Eternal Life Boat. There are 38 islands at the mouth of the Ganges River, and they want to take the Jesus film

to every one of the islands. So far, they've been able to plant four churches on two of the islands. This picture was taken in Pakistan, the Muslim Urdu people. In this culture, the Muslim culture, the women are separated from the men. And oftentimes from these cultures, when people become Christians in the church, they will often continue this practice of the women sitting on one side and the men sitting on

another. At one of these showings in Pakistan, the pastor asked everyone to raise their hand who had prayed the prayer to receive Christ, and nobody's hand moved. Everyone sat there still for a while.

In fact, in the Jordanian phone book on the front cover next to the picture of King Hussein, there is an ad for how you can order a Jesus film video. Another story from the Muslim world is that Yasser Arafat, now that he's in control of Bethlehem, he gave permission for the film to be shown on television in that area. I don't remember if it was Easter or Christmas, but he gave permission, and that was the first time that it's been able to be shown in that area because previously the Israeli government would never allow it to be shown.

report, and he said flying over Zaire, it was like flying over broccoli, just it was dense jungle. Another team went to a remote area and had to go by helicopter, and when they got there, it was so remote that one of the villagers brought an armful of hay to feed to this strange creature that had brought the team in. This picture shows people distributing materials and cars lined up in ports in Italy, France, and Spain. Every summer there are North Africans that work in Europe, but then they go back to Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia to visit their families, and while they're waiting to get on the ferries, Christians are there distributing materials, Arabic New Testaments, the Jesus film in Arabic,

and also the audio cassette, and they can listen to the audio cassette while they're in their car getting ready to go back to Morocco or wherever. This is really exciting for us. It's another means of getting the gospel into these countries.

So I thought, well, I'm just going to go ahead and tell her, and she'll find out eventually. I said, it's a film and radio version on the life of Jesus, who is your prophet. Islam recognizes Jesus as a prophet, and she talked with me for a while and said, well, let me call you back this afternoon, and when she called back, her tone of voice was very much changed. She sounded quite disturbed and upset, and she said, I can't do this translation.

We think maybe she spoke with her husband, and he warned her not to do it. We thought it would be simpler, because it's a part of Spain, and no one's going to throw

recognized in the film, have told us they won't allow their voice to be used in the film, so we need to re-record a few parts. So we may have to go back to Mauritania, or maybe record in a neighboring country. But it's worth it, because the thrill I had, I know what it was like to receive Christ, and seeing their thrill when they understand the message. One last story, we heard the story of a country I believe was Turkey.

It wasn't named in the report, but we sent summer projects there, and American college

Sorry, that he had, in three hours, had seen the film, and he and his family had invited Christ into their lives. We're excited about this ministry, we're doing more in the Muslim world, and we will be asking you for more prayer requests through our newsletters, and we're always thrilled to come back and see you, and share with you, and thank you for supporting our ministry. We do so much appreciate your prayers. We talk a lot in our office about the fact that the gospel is gone every place in the world, that it's easy to get to, that it's easy to, for political reasons or just geographic reasons, and now, the places that are left are the hard places, and a lot of the places

are hard because of satanic strongholds, just great resistance to the gospel, and some places just physically, they're hard to get to, and so we do covet your prayers, I feel a lot

France who had then called our office and just left a message, pray, and well that's really good, what's going on, what are we praying for, what happened, we haven't heard from him, but everything went fairly well, it ended up what had happened, all the actors that were going to be involved in the recording, all of them, they're all believers, had been called in and questioned by police, now the police didn't have any idea what Mark was doing, you know, Mark wasn't involved at all, but it was kind of a tense situation for the believers in the country, so we do appreciate your prayers.

Who but God, who but God, who but God? Only God would condescend for us and choose the weakness of the cross, who wept the tears that conquered sin, that we might laugh with him. Who but he who knew no sin would make himself the very thing he knew he could not look upon? Endure the cross and scorn it, shame, and choose the very weak things of this world to overcome the strong.

Who but God, who but God, who but God? Only God would send us his only son, obedient to death, our spotless one, servant, savior, so lonely now. Soon every knee shall bow.

Who but God would send his son to condescend and make himself the likes of a mere mortal man? Who but God, who but God, who but God? Who but God, who but God, who but God? Who but God, who but God, who but God?

Take your Bibles and turn with me to Acts chapter 13. I just want to share briefly a few minutes this morning with you. We won't actually get into much, but as we prepare for the Lord's Table, this is the first Sunday of the month, and it's the time that we come to the Lord's Table here at Calvary Chapel. And I think it's appropriate that Mark and Nancy share with us this morning just in light of the overall theme of what we're going to be coming into in these next two chapters.

If you looked at your bulletin, you notice the title is To the Uttermost. My greatest desire, my heart as a pastor teacher, is not simply to correctly articulate the Word of God, to not simply correctly exegete doctrine, in other words, to pull out of the Scripture what's there instead of eisegete it, instead of read into it something that isn't there. I have a desire to do that, to accurately handle and present the Word of God, but I have a desire, and I don't know if it's greater or not, but it sure has been overwhelming for me, I have a desire, and I don't know if it's greater or not, but it sure has been overwhelming me lately in study and in teaching, to somehow help the listeners see God as He really is,

and to see the love that He has for us, to bring us into His presence, and to have it be more than just a Bible study, to be more than just a time in a book. How do you picture your relationship with God right now this morning? How do you picture your walk with the Lord? How do you picture God? Is God some heavy-handed, demanding, alienated, kind of separated being who's God, and He's high and lifted up,

but He's distant from you, and everything you do, you feel like He doesn't hear or He doesn't care, and we've talked about it in our time in Chapter 12 where we talked about prayer, and at times, I know, you wrestle with why pray, because He doesn't hear or He doesn't answer the way I want Him to answer, and we've already dealt with that. But is that how you see Him this morning? Maybe you say, no, I see Him as a loving, heavenly Father. Do you see Him that way just because that's what it says in here, or do you actually experience Him that way?

Do you feel His presence? Do you sense and know that? And when you are in especially difficult situations, and people talk about being embraced in the love of God, and feeling His arms around you, do you know that? Do you feel that? Is that, again, more than just words that are communicated? You see, that's the heart that I have. That's what I want you to know,

because I think that's the greatest thing as Christians to know about God. I encourage, and I know pastors do, and you hear it a lot about your prayer time and your time in the Word of God, and do you feel that as a duty? I mean, do you feel that when, boy, when I don't pray or I don't, you know, spend time in God's Word that I've missed a check on my week. You know, I can't check off Tuesday because I didn't spend time in the Word.

Is it a duty, or have you come to that point where it's a communication, a communion? It's a love relationship, and when you don't spend that time, it aches, not because you didn't get to check off something, or God's going to be mad at you because you didn't do it, but because you didn't get that opportunity to be with Him. Ann and I, especially, I know, you know, as married people, it's easier to take each other for granted, and we wrestle with that at times. But I long for time to be able to just spend with her, not doing secretarial duties in the church or doing some ministry function, but just to spend with her and just to talk with her.

When she and I were going together, I fought for that kind of time. It wasn't, you know, I wasn't looking at the day and go, well, I have to go spend time with Ann. You know, I'd scratch for time to do that. I longed for that. I longed to get off work so I could go and spend time with her. Do you feel that way about the Lord? When you miss your time with Him in prayer and Bible study, is that how you feel?

See, that's how I want you to feel. That's how I want to communicate His Word every time we're together to bring us to that point of realizing that kind of relationship because it's from that kind of relationship that everything else happens. It's from how you perceive the Lord that we can ask you to pray that God would continue to grant the ability and the anointing to be able to present His Word so that it's not misunderstood, so that it's correctly understood and we correctly see Him, we correctly see what He's trying to communicate to us. There's a story, and it's a true story.

It happened in 1995. It was a communication between American and Canadian personnel, and the transcript was recorded and released in October of 1995 by the Chief of Naval Operations, and it goes as follows. The Americans to the Canadians first. Please divert your course 15 degrees to the north to avoid a collision. And the Canadians responded. Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.

And the Americans in turn responded. This is the captain of a U.S. Navy ship, and I say again, divert your course. And the Canadians responded. No, I say again, you divert your course. And the Americans responded again. This is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the second largest ship in the United States Atlantic Fleet. We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers, and numerous support vessels.

I demand that you change your course 15 degrees north, that's on 5 degrees north, or countermeasures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship. And the Canadians responded. This is a lighthouse, your call. Sometimes we fail to see the truth of what's being communicated, and sometimes that's the fault of the presenter. And so my desire is to present God's word in a way that is understandable

to where you see him the way he really is. Sometimes pride can keep us from seeing the obvious. One of the parts of preparation to teach is to go through and do what's called inductive Bible study. And you take a text, like we're going to be going through chapters 13 and 14 next, so take that text and outline it. And then whatever section we're going to go through within that,

if we're just going to do a few verses or a segment of verses to outline that, break that down further within the overall outline so that everything fits, so that all the parts come together. And do word studies and everything within that. And so at times it's, well, okay, now what, Lord, do you want us to see out of this? And then put the outline together.

And if you have a study Bible, if you look at it, if you have an NIV study Bible and you're looking at it, you know, your study Bibles are broken down with chapteral headings and then broken down with subheadings, broken down that way. It's like an outline. And I was looking at my study Bible, and it's broken down into cities. It starts off with Antioch, Barnabas, and Saul sail off, and then Cyprus and Pisidian, and on through the rest of chapters 13 and 14.

And I thought, well, why mess with a good thing? We'll just use, we'll just use what's laid out here for us and just look at the various ways that the Lord moved in these different cities. And then the Lord really spoke to my heart as far as the overall study in these chapters being to the uttermost, to the uttermost. And it's taken from chapter one in Acts where you remember, you know the background of the book of Acts.

And Jesus told the disciples to tarry in Jerusalem, to wait in Jerusalem until they received the promise. And then in verse eight of chapter one, he says, for you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and NIV says, and to the ends of the earth. And if you're reading King James, it says to the uttermost parts of the earth. And I like that.

So to the uttermost parts of the earth is where we're going to be witnesses. Now, again, on perspective and on seeing the love of God and understanding God's love or seeing him as just a deity that's removed and not personal and just demanding. How do you, how do you hear that verse in Acts chapter one, verse eight? How do you receive that verse? How do you see it?

Do you see it as a command of God that you're going to receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses and you are going to go from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the uttermost parts of the earth. To all those places you don't want to go. To all those people you don't want to see. You're going there. Do you see it that way? Because a lot of people see it that way.

A lot of people see witnessing that way. They're scared to death to witness because what do they know? And they're afraid they're going to get something wrong and God's going to eat them, you know? Hand's going to come out of heaven and squish you. Do you see God doing that? Is it a command that's heavy and burdensome? You see, if you do, then you've got a wrong perspective of God

because Jesus himself said, come unto me all of you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. So if we're all hung up in the Christian walk here, it's our fault. Somehow we've gotten a faulty perspective. And that's not to say that there aren't the rough times that we go through.

We face an enemy who wants to kill us and destroy us. We'll go through difficult times. We'll go through times where we face disease and destruction and death. But with the Lord, there's a difference.

and you're going to go whether you like it or not. It's like Jesus saying, man, do you understand? The power of God's going to come upon you and it's just going to fill you and you're not going to be able to help but go. You're just going to go. I'm just telling you in advance this is what's going to happen and you're just going to be moved by the Spirit and it's just going to be a joy.

He wasn't saying this is going to be something that you're going to have to do and you're going to hate it and I don't want to go over there. I never want to go to that country or that place over there. When missionaries speak, you kind of want to hum in your mind because you don't want to hear God's voice saying, I want you to go there, you know, because you don't want to go. That's not the way God is.

When you understand God's love, there's such a welling up of God's Spirit inside of you that you don't care what you have to do. You know God's going to carry you. You know he's not only going to send you to the uttermost, he's going to love you to the uttermost. He's going to take you and he's going to be with you through whatever you face to the uttermost.

And it doesn't make any difference. Perfect love casts out fear. Do you know him that way? That's the way I want you to know him. This past week, I was reading in Charles Stanley's Devotional In Touch and he was, on that particular day, he was talking about Psalm 121 and verse 1, of course, I look under the hills from whence cometh my help, talking about the area of apprehension that we go through

when we face the difficult situation. And he was expounding on verse 2 in that psalm, which is my help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth, the creator, God. And he used a phrase that I'd never heard used this way before. He said, God is tenacious in his affections towards us. God is tenacious in his affections towards us. Now, the word tenacious or tenacity,

I've always seen as, you know, the old bulldog, they're always associated with a bulldog. Bulldog tenacity, a bulldog hangs on, bites, never lets go. And it was associated back during World War II with Churchill. He looked like a bulldog and he acted like he was tenacious. And he was, you remember, the one thing about Winston Churchill that everybody remembers is the phrase that he said

to the students at that class where he was talking about what was coming and that as a country, England was going to hang in there till the end and that they would never give up, never give up, never give up. And that earmarked, as far as we're concerned, a definition of tenacity, that I'll never give up. And I've always seen that word as being against an enemy. You know, the enemy comes and I'll never give up.

I'll just hang in there. But I'd never thought about it as considering God's love for me and God's love for you. You see, God loves you so much, not only did he send his son to die for you, but he pursues you with his love like a bulldog. And there's nothing you can do about it. There's nothing you can do to make him not love you, you see, because with his love he says to you,

I'll never give up, never give up, never give up. His affections towards you are tenacious. I want you to hang on to that for the trials that you seem to go through. God's not going to give up and he's going to love you to the uttermost. So as we look at this section, and this morning we're just going to do one verse. So hang in there, thinking, oh my, it's already this time and we haven't even,

and we've still got to go to the tables. Hang in there, I'll just do one verse, I'll do it quick. If you look at chapters 13 and 14, I want you to see in those sections and then prayerfully and every time you sit down and read the word that you're going to see God's love for you, just jump off the page. His tenacious love for you, that he's not only sending us to the uttermost, he is just so filling us that we'll just want to go, and he's going to love us and lead us.

He's going to be there with us, he's not going to forsake us, and he's going to love us to the uttermost so we have nothing to fear. Perfect love casts out fear. Quickly, briefly, verse 1. They're in Antioch. This is the first city. This is the place of preparation, Antioch. These first three verses, we're just going to do verse 1 today. In the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers,

Barnabas, Simeon, called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Mannion, who had been brought up with Herod, the Tetrarch, and Saul. That's it. We're going to see God's love and that he loves us to the uttermost. In Antioch there were prophets and teachers. Now the word prophecy simply means to speak forth. They weren't foretelling the future. They weren't fortune tellers.

They were speaking forth God's heart. They were speaking forth God's word. There was no New Testament yet. The epistles had not yet been written. Paul's just now getting ready to go on a missionary journey. He hasn't written any letters yet. Peter hasn't written any letters yet. James hasn't written any letters yet. John hasn't written any letters yet. So there aren't any epistles yet.

So there's not any New Testament canon or scripture for him to sit down and read, to teach. And the only written word at this time was the Torah. And there weren't that many copies of it available. And so the prophets were those who were anointed by God's spirit to speak forth his heart, to speak forth the word of God that was from the Torah, and present his heart from his word,

So they would spend more time. The prophets would simply come through and usually present the word, and then move on to other areas. The teachers would stay and remain and bring the word into its fullness. And these names are listed here, and I want to quickly go through these names. They're just a few names. But I want us to consider, why did God give us that verse?

Always ask a question. Always ask God a question of the text. God, why did you just put that verse in there? Why did you put these names here? What's the significance of those names? Am I supposed to know something about those names, Lord?

and he laid it at the feet of the apostles. It's interesting. You look back and Barney wasn't a member of the Magnificent Seven in Acts chapter 6. He wasn't part of the seven deacons. Of course, he wasn't Hellenistic. That was one of the reasons. But Barnabas never sought a position. He never sought. He wasn't looking for a position. He just ministered. Why?

Why could he be such an encourager? Because he understood God's love. God loved him so much and he saw that love and he just loved other people through Barney.

a second. Back in chapter 11 in verse 26, it says, Barnabas went and found Saul and when he found him he brought him to Antioch and so for a year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. So Barney was a teacher and he taught great numbers of people there in Antioch. He didn't need a position. He was an encourager and these people were new believers and they needed to be instructed

and so he was a teacher now in Antioch. Back to chapter 13, the second one that's mentioned is Simeon called Niger. Simeon called Niger. Now, Simeon indicates that he's from a Jewish background. His name in Hebrew would be Simon and Niger, the word indicates that he was black. He was a black man. It's very probable and a lot of scholars in their commentaries indicate that this was

very probably Simon of Cyrene. Now, you remember Simon of Cyrene in the Gospels. He's the one that carried Jesus' cross when Jesus stumbled and fell and the Roman guard grabbed the man out of the crowd and had him put the cross on his back and bear it to Golgotha. That was Simon of Cyrene. Simon probably stood there and watched the rest of the crucifixion, wondering what was

going on. He'd come to worship at the Passover. That's what everybody was there for. And the scene had happened and he had no idea what was going on. A tremendous, tremendous song again by Ray Bolts depicts that particular scenario. And he sees Jesus crucified. He probably hangs around wondering what's going on and three days later Jesus raises from the dead and all of the stuff that's going on as a result of that.

I see him just hanging around, man, stuff's happening. You know, I want to see what's going on. Probably there at Pentecost, 50 days later. Very probably one of those that was saved that day at Pentecost. Goes back to his home in Cyrene and very probably plants the first church there in Cyrene. Interesting. Then we read back in chapter 11 where back in verse 20 of chapter 11 in Acts it says,

And some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene went to Antioch and began to speak to the Greeks, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. So Simeon or Simon probably came as now he was just bubbling over and was going as far as he was concerned to the uttermost parts of his earth to tell people about Jesus. Not because he was commanded to do so or had to do so. He was drawn on by that love.

Paul mentions later that it's the love of Christ that constrains me. I have to preach because it's God's love that fills me. Paul wasn't scared that if he didn't, he was going to get smacked around by the Lord. He was scared of not doing it right and somehow being set aside as a castaway. He wanted to please God, but it was God's love that drew him. And that's what evidently happened with Simon.

Simeon called Niger and he was a teacher in this early church in Antioch. Now Antioch, you remember, is a central location of the church now. The focus is shifting from Jerusalem to Antioch. And Antioch is going to send out the missionaries and Antioch is going to be the head of the church. It's going to be the focal point of the church. Back in chapter 11, it says this is the first place where the disciples were called Christians.

Well, now we have the third person here in chapter 13, verse 1 is called Lucius of Cyrene. Well, he's very possibly a friend of Simon's and involved in the planning of that church in Cyrene as well. And a missionary with Simon to Antioch. So he probably also was a black man. It's interesting to me that the first major teachers in the church mentioned in the book of Acts were black.

Men who loved the Lord. Boy, do the white supremacists have it all wrong. They don't know the word. These were men who loved God and they saw God's love for them and they were moved. And they just wanted to do what he wanted them to do. And somehow he just said, let's go to Antioch. And they said, let's go. It wasn't anything that they feared. As we go through this, you're going to see Paul knows he's going to go to Rome and knows he's going to die.

And he wasn't afraid of that. Let's go. Let's get it on. That's the way I want to be. That's the way I want to be every day in my life. As long as God allows me to live, as long as I'm in this world and walking with the Lord, that's the way I want to be. And that's the way I want you to be. And that's what I want you to see. As you see the Lord in his tenacious affection for you.

Well, then we have Mannion, the fourth guy here. Who's this? I have no idea. It just says Mannion. Oh, but then it tells us who had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch. He was a foster brother of Herod the Tetrarch. Now, who's Herod the Tetrarch? You know him as Herod Antipas. He was a guy that beheaded John the Baptist. He was a guy that Pilate sent Jesus down to try and do something with.

And Herod sent him back because he wouldn't talk to him. And this Mannion was Herod's foster brother. He was probably there when John the Baptist was coming to the court of Herod and condemning him. Proclaiming that he was wrong for taking his brother's wife. And he probably heard John on numerous occasions. And he watched what happened when John was beheaded.

And he probably was there when Jesus was brought into the court. And although Jesus didn't speak, he'd heard about him, I'm sure. And he was able to stand in the presence of Christ. And he must have seen something maybe that Herod didn't.

A congressman who loves the Lord today can take God's word. Apply it into the political structure. The function of government. He can say, this is what government's doing. And notice how it's going away from the Lord. Or if they do this, we'll be turning back to the Lord. He could give the church that insight into the basic nuts and bolts function. Of what was going on in the world.

And then of course Saul. We know Saul. We've seen him up to this point. He was the persecutor of the church. A lot of people killed because of Saul. And he lived with that. But his educational background was pretty awesome. You know that. The Hebrew of Hebrews. Schooled under Gamaliel. He would be the one who could take the Old Testament and accurately apply it.

To what the situations were today. He was the one that could accurately take what the people only heard as far as symbol and ritual. And actually apply it. And show them that Jesus was the sacrifice and the priest at the same time. That he was the one after the order of Melchizedek. Saul could do that.

But at least think about the parts that he's listing there. As far as they're concerned. I see his heart so much for his people. We'll talk about that later. But these are the people. These five individuals that are mentioned as teachers. They come from different cultures. From different backgrounds. A different heritage. They're people who normally are not supposed to get along together.

And yet God has brought them from their homes to the uttermost. And he's going to send them on to the uttermost. To tell people about Jesus. Now collectively that's what you and I are.