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Acts 28
Gerry Covenhoven
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Sermon Summary
In this sermon, the preacher focuses on the last two verses of Matthew's Gospel chapter 28. He highlights the action words and commands given by Jesus, including "Go," "Teach," and "Baptize." The preacher emphasizes the importance of fulfilling these commands and the need for more laborers in spreading the word of God. He also addresses the lack of faith among believers and encourages them to trust in God's power and guidance. Overall, the sermon emphasizes the urgency and responsibility of sharing the gospel with all nations.
Sermon Transcription
Matthew chapter twenty-eight, beginning at verse sixteen. Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee and into the mountains where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, they heard his voice, for some doubt. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach your nation, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. So unto all the world. I can imagine that as the Lord Jesus Christ spoke these words to his disciples, they were utterly astounded by it. To think that here the Lord Jesus Christ was talking to a little group of eleven men and speaking to them about world conquest. Telling them that they could go on over all the world spreading their gospel message, and a gospel message that was going to enter in and permeate the culture of Greece, the military power of Rome, the religion of the Jewish nation, and was going to make a tremendous impact throughout the entire world. I'm sure that they couldn't have realized what was going to be accomplished in many years, and yet here the Lord Jesus Christ was telling them that this is what they should do. I wonder how much they at this time comprehended what he was saying. We know that as they moved along in the Pentecost and developed, why, we say, well, good night. What's happening there in the book of Acts is greater than what we see today. That's true. And yet, I believe that as we look at some of the things here, we see the plan of the Lord Jesus Christ for this age. I think there's some telling points in these verses that we have read that will show us that even with what the Lord Jesus Christ did, with what he started with, shall we say, it's just not so terribly different today. Proportions have changed, or shall I say sizes have changed. Different things have changed. And yet, essentially we find that there are some things that are quite the same. You'll notice that the Lord Jesus Christ here is speaking, first of all, to just eleven disciples. Does that number eleven strike you in any way as being out of order? He had started with twelve, hadn't he? The Lord Jesus Christ did have twelve disciples. He chose twelve to go forth. And yet, here he is after the resurrection with only eleven. Now we say, well, of course, he was betrayed. Of course. You know, he just turned it off. That's all it was. And yet, what we have here is a deficient number. The Lord Jesus Christ chose twelve. And he had said that they were to be seated across twelve rooms. That's what he was trying to do here. So here are only eleven. Now we know that they chose another messiah, that he might be with them, so that on the day of Pentecost, they had that complete number of twelve. It was complete again. But here at this point, when he gives them the great commission, there are numbers deficient. I think that in a way, this is the history of the Church. The history of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ is continually a history of deficient numbers. A shortage of manpower. A shortage of people to do the work of God. But weren't eleven here because the Lord Jesus had only chosen eleven? Eleven were not here because he said, that's all we need. Not for a minute. Eleven were here because one had turned aside and was not following the Lord as he should. And as the Lord looks out on the business fields today, as the Lord looks out on his work in these United States and Canada and anywhere, I have the feeling that the Lord is looking at a number of eleven, so to speak. A deficient number engaged in the work of the Lord. Not the number that he would intend that he would have in the works if he had his way. But deficient. Because we have our way. And we're not engaged in the work of the Lord. That's not our point. But after a while, when we read this story in the book of the Acts, or shall I say, in the Scriptures continuum, Paul writing to Timothy, says that all other angels turned away from him. And then he ends up that letter by saying, Jesus has forsaken me. There's a tremendous payoff in those words. That mighty man of God so greatly used the man whom we think today, boy, let's drive me around Paul, let's do what he has to say, let's follow along the principles that God gave him. And yet, in that day, many turned away from him. And yes, you know, it's easy for us to say, fine, Paul's our candidate. But if we were there, would we be in the missing number? Would we have been some that turned away, some that thought the cost was too great, some that thought it's not worth it? I often think of John Mark, he's an encouragement to me. Because almost John Mark had been chosen to go with the Apocalypse, had turned back. John Mark was one who, because of his care that Barnabas gave and Peter gave, let it work useful to fall into it. Even though he had at one time set his hand to the plow and had turned back, and the word of the Lord Jesus comes to a mind where he says, such and such a saint is not worthy of the kingdom of God. But it shows us he can become worthy of the kingdom of God by being explored later on. Never think that it just drops out along the way, somewhere along the line, that you can't become worthy of the kingdom of God. You can't become a useful servant in the kingdom of the Lord. I think it is interesting I'm telling also that even in the book of Revelation, there's no simulation of time. Let me read of two witnesses in chapter 11. Now the scripture says that in the heart of two or three witnesses shall every word be established. Now two is a sufficient number, but three would be a more complete number. But in Revelation chapter 11, Rome will find two. And I wonder if that's not the story of the fifth. That's not comparable to the eleventh here. Just enough to get the job done, but really not as many as should be there getting the job done, and not as many as could be the job done. May the Lord help us that we may not be amongst the number that has dropped out. As the brother Paul Logan mentioned in his scripture from Matthew chapter 9, where the Lord Jesus was looking out upon the book of Enoch, he had compassion upon them. He had compassion. What did he say was his heart? He said the harvest in Egypt is plentiful, but the laborers are few. And the result of that was, he said, pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that he'll send forth the laborers into his harvest. Endure the deficiency of the numbers. Endure the fact that the Lord is sending in the workers for hundreds of centuries. Pray that God will send forth workers into his harvest. Do you know what happens when you say that? When you read about the people to that commandment of the Lord Jesus Christ, pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that he'll send forth the laborers into his harvest. And I believe the disciples prayed. I believe the disciples were in the room. They began to pray about it. And so the very next chapter, we find the Lord Jesus comes. He'll come into his harvest. Sending them out. All right, you've prayed about it, now get going. Begin by praying, end up by going. And notice again, you seem to pray. You might go. And then he did a wonderful tribute. The Lord Jesus always did it. So first of all, we find a deficient number. Only eleven, when the Lord had originally said as well. But then in the next verse, in verse 17, we read something that is even more tragic, I believe. And when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted him. Unbelief. Lack of faith. And isn't this so characteristic of God's people today? I want to say that I love it that God would reveal our hearts and make us submit and do such a thing. He says, I think that you would all be ashamed at what God would reveal from our hearts. It's a tremendous unbelief. And yet, isn't this what we find even in these disciples? Here I find another encouraging thing because these disciples, as we read about them in the book of Matthew, we find the Lord Jesus Christ speaking about these disciples and continually calling them, O ye of good faith. And that is just what runs through with him very quickly. Matthew 6 and verse 30. And notice, every time he speaks about faith in relation to the disciples, Matthew 6 and 30 says, Wherefore, if God so clothed the grass of the field which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Chapter 8, verse 26. He said unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith? Chapter 14, verse 31. Insomuch that the most of them wondered when they saw that Jesus keepeth and remains to be whole, and remains to walk. Now, excuse me, I've lost out something here. 1431. I must have the wrong reference here. That's right. I don't see it. The blind machine that glorifies the God of Israel. All right, I understand. 1531, that's a very long time. 1431. Immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou die? And 168. Quickly, Jesus proceeded. He said unto them, O ye of little faith, why weepest ye among yourselves? Because ye have brought no bread. 1717. Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, and he exclaimed into his disciples, How long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bringing hatred to me. This is the story of the faith of his disciples in the Gospel of Matthew. But he goes on to correct it. Chapter 17, verse 20. He says, Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief, for verily I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seeds, ye shall stand in the mountains. Remove hence from yonder place, and it shall be removed, and nothing shall be important unto you. Chapter 21, verse 21. Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, if ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done in the history, but also it shall turn, lest not the seed I remove be cast into the sea, it shall be done. So this is the word Jesus said every time he comments on the faith of the disciples. It is, O ye of little faith, O faithless and perverse generation. And the only faith that he commends in the Gospel of Matthew is the faith of unbelievers, the faith of the centurions. When he says, Lord, just say the word and my servant will be healed. And the Lord says, I have not found so great faith, not in all this yield. And in the faith of that seraphimician woman who comes to him, and he says, woman, great is that faith. The only time you can have faith is a part of unbelief, so to speak. But the believers take that. And what can we say about ourselves today? Do we have the faith that we really need for the work of God? Are we really cast upon Him in a believing way to really believe that the word of Jesus includes those great things in us? You know, the Apostle Paul says, we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency and the power may be of God and not of ourselves. And this is particularly the story of Christianity. God is doing His work in earthen vessels through weak people, through people that in themselves have little faith, and yet, as in our little faith we learn to be cast upon God, we can accomplish great things. And then the Apostle, the Lord Jesus Christ, just before His ascension and resurrection, the Apostle says, you shall receive power after that the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And this power, then, in their lives, the Holy Spirit of God, was to move them along and bear them along in the work of God in order that they might see some great things done for them. But then as we move down in our chapter to verse 19, I think we come to what is presented before us as the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus Christ. This sufficient number, this number of deeds that were manifesting their lack of faith, were to count upon the power of the sovereign Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus came and said unto them, saying, All powers belong to me in heaven and on earth. To recognize the sovereignty of our Lord Jesus, and to recognize that it is in His name that we are to go, to recognize that the Lord's work is not our work, so to speak. It is His work. And we are to go, then, engaged in His work in His name. Not depending upon our resources, not depending upon what we might be able to do with our education or our gifts, or one thing or another like that, but to remember that it is the Lord Jesus Christ because all power, all authority, has been given unto me in heaven and on earth. You know, that beautiful passage there in Philippians chapter 2 where it speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ and His condescension becoming a servant and going through the depth of the cross, wherefore God has given Him a name that is above every name. That is the name of Jesus, every knee to His eye. And if we were only to realize that more as we went forth and recognize that everyone will someday bow their knees to the Lord Jesus Christ and we have the privilege of taking that knee to them today so that today they could do so voluntarily and find salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ, that there is one who has been made sovereign by God, who has been given that place of power and authority and it is in His name we can go. You know, I think it's tremendous to recognize then what the Lord Jesus Christ is to be in each and every one of us. Isaiah and Trumpet prophesy concerning this. In Isaiah chapter 49 verse 7, one of these beautiful songs of the servant of Jehovah. Isaiah chapter 49 and verse 7 says, Thus saith the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and the Holy One, to Him whom man despises, to Him whom the nation of Horus, to a servant of rubbers, King shall see and arise. First of all, for shall worship because of the Lord that is faithful and the Holy One of Israel and He shall choose you. Yet, the Lord Jesus Christ has been given that name that is above every name and in His name the rulers, the popes, the saints, the mighty victors must bow down and acknowledge and even John of the Gospel has reached some of such people in the past century of the earth. There have been some who have definitely confessed that name of the Lord Jesus Christ because of His authority. But since it is in the name of that authority that John has called to go and be a proper follower of every promise, and he says we are ambassadors for Christ, now an ambassador does not go in his own authority, he goes in the authority of another. And as long as we recognize that we can go in the authority of another, that there can be real power in our lives. You know, even the Lord Jesus Christ came here in the name of another. He came in the name of the apostles. Remember when the centurion came to the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, Lord, just speak the word. Because, he said, I also am a man under authority. And I say to one, go, and he goes, and to another come, and he comes, and to another do this, and to another do that. He says, I'm under authority. So he says, not in exactly these words, but you are saying one was under authority. Say the word and it will be done. And you and I, that is, we recognize that we're under authority. And I think we need to recognize that all the time. We are under authority. And as being under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are under of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority Jesus Christ. We are under the authority Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under of the Lord Jesus Christ. the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under Jesus Christ. We are under the authority Jesus Christ. We are under Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority We are under the authority of the Lord We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the authority of the Lord We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. You can tell from plits of apparel this man, God the seat of the Lord Chief of Staff, and this man wanted to go with the Lord Chief of Staff, I can certainly understand why he would have wanted to go. Having been under the dominion of demons, and having suffered so many things for so long, and now this man finding himself a whole man once again. A man in his right mind. A man able to be rational. A man who had known the touch of the Lord Chief of Staff at that point in his life. He says, Lord I want to go with you. I want to stay with you wherever you are. So what did the Lord Chief of Staff do? Go back home. Go home and tell them what wonderful things the Lord has done for you. And I believe that all of us in this room know what the touch of the Lord Chief of Staff is. It's got to start right in our own homes. It's got to start right in our own offices. It's got to start right where we are now. If we can't be the Lord's servants, that's where we are now. We won't be able to be the Lord's servants out in Zambia, or in Peru, or in any other foreign country in the world. We've got to be the Lord's servants, that's where we are now. And the Lord Chief of Staff then first of all told that man, you go and you tell these people what things they've done. You know the whole story behind that. When these townspeople came out and they told us what the Lord had done, actually what bothered them was what had happened to all the pigs that they had raised. All the pigs had gone down into the Sea of Galilee and had drowned. And they were awfully upset about this, and they asked the Lord to depart from their coast. They didn't want to go. And it wasn't until some time later, when the Lord Chief of Staff came, some people flocked around and they received him gladly. Why? Because that man who had been here had gone back to his home. He had obeyed the Lord Chief of Staff. He'd given them what he'd learned of the Lord Chief of Staff, and these people then, later on, they were willing to receive the Lord Chief of Staff. What a tremendous impact the testimony of that man had on those people. That God would give us such a testimony is our prayer, I'm sure. But then, the Lord Chief of Staff also there, as is inferred already, saying that you shall receive power after that the Holy Spirit has come upon you, said, you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, that's starting at home, and all Judea, and in Samaria, and in the unknown parts of the earth, reaching out to every place on the face of the globe. And here then was this idea that world conquests were for the Lord Jesus Christ, for some men that God only gave them. It's not a conquest of the swords of iron and steel to take away men's money. It's a conquest of the sword of the spirit of the word of God, to compliment the types that they might be going to solicit against, and acknowledge his sovereignty as they had done. So we see that if the Lord tells them to go, and you and I have history from Jerusalem, to go, every last one of us, and I repeat, it's not simply going to foreign fields, it's going wherever the Lord would have us go. Home, the office, the school, wherever it might be. The Lord wants us to go there. And then if he does call us from there to some other place, praise the Lord. But we need to go. That's important. And then the idea of making disciples of all nations. Now, what does it mean to make disciples of all nations? Well, to make a disciple first of all, it doesn't have to be a person coming to a city known as the Lord Jesus Christ, accepting Christ as Savior. That is implied in this whole thing. As the Apostle Paul writes to the Cephalonians, that they had turned to God from idols. They had experienced conversion. There was a right of outfaith in their lives. They had turned their attention to the Lord Jesus Christ, touching Him as their one Lord and Savior. But then they manifested that the short time that Paul had been able to be with them, and then as Timothy continued with them a little while longer, and Luke, that they had learned some more things as well. And these people, while they had turned to the Lord, from idols, they had gone around serving the Lord Jesus Christ faithfully, with the result that, as Paul says there in the first chapter of 1 Thessalonians, the Word of the Lord has been founded throughout all of Macedonia because of them. For tremendous testimony, for an infant's hearing. How many years have you simply been hearing Minneapolis people or not? As the Word of the Lord has been founded forth in all of Minneapolis because of these assemblies, and throughout the region around the United States because of these assemblies, I think when we compare ourselves with the Thessalonian Christians, we're supposed to shame, aren't we not? And I think that we have a tremendous responsibility to be more active in evangelism in getting out and taking the least of these things with the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. That we might truly serve the Lord, as those Thessalonians served the Lord, as they were entering into a life of true discipleship, following the Lord Jesus Christ and imitating Him, as they were continually willing to. And then he says, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. You know, this matter of baptism, a little bit on the side perhaps, but this matter of baptism, I think, brethren, is something in which we are really negligent when it comes to really comparing our practice with the scriptural example. Now, what I mean is this. Luther, the book of the Acts of Succour, was just a history of the church of the beginning. And one thing that will strike you, I'm sure, is that these believers, the very minute they received the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, they were baptized. There was not a long period of time between their perfection of faith in Christ and their baptism. And I honestly believe that we are negligent, and that we who are responsible in the assembly for putting a time limit, for putting a period of waiting, for putting a period of analyzing and looking over, and giving a person a chance to think it over and all, we are negligent as to the fulfilling of what we find in Scripture. We profess to obey the Scripture. We say we have the truth as to the local church. Well, do we have the truth as to baptism? You know, that's all a part of the puzzle. And I really believe that if we were to teach what baptism means now, it's an acknowledging of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And if we were to just, in our preaching of the gospel, preach baptism along with it, recognizing that if a person gets saved, all right, we'll do all we possibly can to see that that person is baptized that same day. Now, do you think I'm right or wrong on that? I think it's Scripture. Honestly, I believe that that's what the Scripture teaches. I know I have missionaries tell me, well, then you can't make that work today. Well, you know, that's what's going with Scripture all along, and what the Church has done with Scripture all along. You can't make it work today, they say. And so they form their denominations of this and this and that, and they tell you other things, because you can't make the Scriptures work today. And we find ourselves, we've been pulled along in the same current as far as Christian life has gone, and we don't realize it. We don't baptize as soon as we should. We don't encourage people to be baptized, as we should. How are we going to know if the people have really changed until we've had some proof of it? Well, did the early Christians worry about that? Did Philip feel condemned because he had baptized a Simon, who it later turned out wasn't a true believer after all? There's absolutely no word of censure in the Scriptures concerning the baptism of that unsaved man. But there does seem to be a spiritual precedent to baptize people as soon as they are saved. And I believe that if we did that, we would understand a little bit more of what the Lordship of Christ means. One thing that we find in Peru, and this happens from time to time, if there is a person who doesn't want to be baptized, there's something wrong, and that person's wrong. And we should be taking attitude. Now this person has made a professional case. Now that we've taught them about baptism, and they don't want to be baptized, they always say, we'll all be baptized the next time. We do not consider them to be believers in the Lordship of Christ. In Spanish they have a very nice word. They have the word sympathizer. Now this is another person if they like the gospel preaching, they tell them all they've never made a professional of the Lordship of Christ. And these who do not want to be baptized, we put them in the same class. We do not count them as being true believers in the Lordship of Christ if they refuse to be baptized. In the Scriptures we find that faith and baptism are given as a parcel, to the extent that Mark says, he that believes and is baptized shall be saved. Now we know that the following verse says, and he that believes not is condemned, showing that the emphasis of faith upon the belief. That's very true. And yet at the same time it shows that these two things were bound together as one. I'd just like to challenge you on that by way of coaching. I think that this is one area in which we have something to learn from Scripture as far as the practice of the Scriptures is concerned. We should definitely be engaged in baptizing these people as soon as we possibly can. And then the Lordship of Christ says, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, whatsoever I have commanded you. I remember when I was a younger Christian, I used to put the emphasis on teaching them all things. The idea that we are responsible for teaching all things that are in the Word of God. Now of course, you read the Scriptures and you say, we're logging in, and you wonder how much you can get in, and how much you can teach, and what not, and how can we possibly be teaching them all things? Well at the same time, the Lordship of Christ did not say teaching them all things. And I'm afraid that maybe some of us are crazy heads of heads because that way we say, we are responsible to teach them all things. The Lordship of Christ says, teaching them to observe all things. Teaching them to put in practice all things, and then it seems to be essential. What we need to teach from the Word of God is obedience to the Word of God. Teaching the people of God to be continually putting into practice the things that they hear. And I wonder how often times in our preaching, in our teaching of the Word of God, we simply teach things from a theoretical point of view. And in many assemblies the listeners have gotten this attitude, well, we're supposed to think about this, and we're supposed to analyze it. Now, how does this fit in with my theology? And that's as far as we go. It's not the idea of a person sitting there and saying, what response does this demand from me? How does this fit into my life, into my practice? Now, this is what the Lordship of Christ wants. Teaching them to observe all things, whatsoever I have to manage it. May the Lord then help us in our missionary work to do this. And then we have this as the continuing purpose of the Lordship of Christ, right to the end of the day, as He says, "...whatsoever I have to bend to His law, and to His law of grace, even unto the end of the world, or the end of the age." The end of this distant century is not our day. We have this as the plan of the Lordship of Christ for this world and for the years. It's an amazing thing that this Gospel of the Lordship of Christ is suited to all people. It is suited to those black Africans in their tribal situations, it is suited to the Africans in the civilized cities, it is suited to the South Americans with their different traditions and cultures. And here is something that we need to learn also in missionary work, not to impose our culture upon the people. As I've gone along in missionary work, I've realized that at the beginning, this is what missionaries before us had done and what we were doing. We were conducting meetings the way we would conduct them here in the United States. And there were certain things, now of course we realize that not all things were in the same pattern, but there were certain things that we thought should be done just the way we did them here, but after all, there were certain things that really could be done in a slightly different way. Now, some of the younger people here might not exactly understand this, but you know, it wasn't so many years ago when all the ladies coming to the meetings would wear hats. And you know, today you hardly know what a hat is, but it was the Luther Day when everybody would wear a hat. And this, of course, was the fulfilling of the scripture that said that the women should have their heads covered. So when one missionary brother went to Peru, while he taught the women there in a church that he had set up, had suddenly thrown out, where they had not been taught to have their heads covered, he said, dear ladies, dear sisters, you should have your heads covered. Now, here's my wife, look how she's got a hat on to cover her head. Well, in this town where they were, you couldn't buy a hat anywhere. And yet, the dear ladies had to have hats to cover their heads. So they fashioned hats as best they could. Well, these poor dear ladies, they would never be seen out in the street. So they had shelves inside where they said, come in, pick up that hat, put it on, and then after the meeting, they put it in a shelf again, and would never be seen out in the street again. Well, you see, this dear missionary brother just thought that, well, a hat is the only kind of coverage that we can use. Whereas, after all, in South America, the very common thing for the women going to the Roman Catholic Church was to use the mantillas that the sisters were using so frequently today. And it would be by far the best thing, according to the culture of Latin America, to say, dear sisters, you should have a mantilla for covering your head. Or, in fact, in the jungle world, we were, we just said, get any kind of a cloth to cover your head. And many of them did have some rather colorful cloths to use in covering their heads, rather than simply a mantilla, which they would have to pay a bit more for in the store. And, another thing now, of course, when you go to a supermarket here in this country, why, they'll say, no bare feet permitted for health reasons, according to the state sanitation code and whatnot. And yet, we don't have such health reasons in these meeting places. And, but we might be a bit offended if somebody came in, say, in one way or another, especially, some hippie-style person came in with bare feet. And yet, do shoes on these streets make any difference before the Lord? And, in fact, in India, it is quite the custom to take off your shoes when you're going into a holy place, to the extent that Bhakti Singh, a real Christian brother over there, who's been the root of the Lord's most famous many assemblies, teaches the Christians that when they enter their assembly meeting place, he says, you should take your shoes off. And, although, you see, there's nothing that the Scripture says you should wear shoes or you shouldn't wear shoes. That's entirely by the way. And, there's something that we don't need to worry about. It's exactly how it's done. As to what kind of a covering the Scripture has, well, that doesn't make any difference. That can change according to the culture of a person. But, the gospel, then, is for all the world, even under the end of the age, so that when customs change and the women begin to give up hats, well, all right, you don't need hats anymore. You lose much thinking. You lose another kind of covering. So, this sort of thing, then, shows the adaptability of the gospel. But, may I say that this does not mean that we need to adapt ourselves just to all the norms of the world, because that can be carried on far too far and can even go beyond the spirit of Scripture. But, then, here the Lord Jesus Christ says, Lo, I am with you, even unto the end of the world, and we can thank God for his promise of his abiding presence. And, it is only the abiding presence of the Lord Jesus Christ that gives one strength to continue on in the discernment as there are. Now, then, today, this afternoon, as I was telling you about the work in Peru, I was telling you about the growth in the work in Peru. And, this evening, as Brother Paul Rosen was telling you about the work there in Zambia, around what they've been laboring, he was showing the growth of the work there in Zambia. You know, we don't commonly tell about the disparagement, about those who have turned aside, about the heartaches in the work, promising Christians, people that we thought were going along so well, and then how Satan stumbled them. And, sometimes, things can really appear very discouraging if we get our eyes off the Lord and onto the circumstances around us. But, we can thank God that we have this promise, then, of that continual presence of the Lord Jesus Christ as he says, Lo, I am with you, even unto the end of the world. But, here I believe, then, that we have the plan of the Lord Jesus Christ where it is. It is to use you and me. Now, the worship of Christ is not given in the door, I think. Sometimes, boy, angels could do a lot better than we could. Or, really, they couldn't, because they're not being used by God. They don't know His redemption. And, God is dependent on you and me. Now, then, there's a little help up there, really, that the advantages were pretty beautiful, even though we may be a number in the minority. Even though we may be an efficient number. But, may we not be lacking from some particular number that the Lord would call, perhaps, to some foreign field. Because of churning of time, because of faithlessness, because of loving the things of this world as demons, or some other reason that might turn us aside from God's purpose for our lives. Sometimes, people get an idea that a missionary is a person that is making a tremendous sacrifice. Well, you know, there are certain sacrifices to be made, and yet, on the other hand, a missionary is a person that's simply walking in the will of the Lord. He's simply walking the way God has chosen for him, and he's finding the greatest joy doing just exactly that. He's finding the fullness of life doing exactly that. And as he looks back on things, and he thinks, well, after all, I didn't say anything sacrificed to come here, and to do this work, and to do something else. He says, the Lord has enriched my life beyond my wildest dreams by bringing me here, and letting me engage in His work here. You know, actually, that's what happens in the life of a missionary. We can remember this, the Lord Jesus has called every one of us, and each of us has that responsibility, then, to be ready to go and to serve Him according to His call. He calls all of us to do various things. May we be conscious of His call, and know what He's calling us to do. And remember that He has given us this responsibility, and He has given us this promise of His continual presence here. Thank God for that, because otherwise, we wouldn't dare face these things that we're called to do. So may the Lord help us, then, to respond to this message. Not just to analyze it and say, yes, that's a great commission, and this, this, and this, and that, and the other thing about it. But to respond to it, each and every one of us. Go and therefore, taking disciples of all nations, in the United States, as well as other nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And Lord, I am with you always. Amen. Thank you for being here.