Call to Worship Psalm 40:10 (NIV)
Hymn JBC # 650 Serve the Lord with gladness
The Lord’s Prayer
The Lord’s Supper
For the World Baptist Prayer Week
Offering
Scripture Luke 4:42~44
Prayer
Sermon “I must proclaim the good news of the
kingdom of God to the other towns also”
Prayer
Hymn JBC # 379 We’ve a story to tell the nations
Doxology JBC # 679
Benediction
The week beginning from today (11/26 to 12/3) is the “World Baptist Prayer Week”.
During the World Baptist Week of Prayer, we especially remember, pray, and give offerings for the various mission works both domestic and international promoted by the Japan Baptist Women's Union of the Japan Baptist Convention, of which our church is also a member,
Since the gospel (good news) of the Kingdom of God was made known to our world through Jesus Christ, many Christians have served in missionary work, making it their mission to share the gospel with the world.
Many evangelists, called by God, have traveled far from their hometowns and places of their residence to various places, sometimes even to foreign lands, to serve in the missionary work of preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And behind the work of the missionaries serving the gospel mission were many believers who supported them with their prayers and offerings.
Even now, there are many missionaries in various places who are serving in missionary work. We remember the work of missionaries engaged in evangelism and wish to support them with our gratitude, prayers, and offerings.
With the name "World Baptist Prayer Week" we want to make sure that "this is a week of prayer (special prayer) first”.
It is important that we give our offerings. But the thing is that all of the work of evangelism must begin with prayer.
Praying to God for missions is also a way of renewing our decision as believers that "God's will comes first, and we will follow the God's will.
In today's Bible passage, we see the people trying to keep Jesus stay with them and Jesus, against their wishes, going off to another place to preach.
From this passage, we hope to hear about following God's will, serving and supporting the work of the gospel ministry.
At the beginning of today's passage, we read that Jesus "went out to a solitary place" in the morning.
In the passage of Gospel of Mark which depicts the same incident as here says “very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed”. (Mark 1:35)
Jesus was beginning a new day with prayer. By praying, Jesus was having a time of intimacy with God (in a solitary place, quietly alone with God the Father) and receiving power and encouragement from the Spirit.
Jesus, the Son of God, also began his day's missionary work with prayer. If this is so, we Christians are taught the importance of beginning everything we do with prayer.
It is not an obligatory act of "we must pray," but a natural way of life as a believer who would says, "without prayer, we cannot begin anything important”.
We hope that our prayers to God will be pure hope that comes from our faith that we always want to begin what is important with a prayer to God.
And we also hope that by praying, we will receive the assurance that "God is leading this work and God is taking the initiative”.
And while Jesus prayed in the solitary place to receive strength and encouragement from God the Father himself, Jesus also prayed intercessory prayers to God the Father for the people.
The Lord Jesus Christ is still the One who intercedes (mediates) between God and us for us.
Romans 8:34 states the following.
Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.
We are born sinning against God (that is the truth the Bible tells us), and as such, no one can approach God or pray to Him just as they were.
But the resurrected Jesus Christ still sits at the right hand of God the Father, interceding for us and offering prayers of intercession.
Therefore, we can approach God through Christ as those whose sins have been forgiven through His cross. In the name of Jesus, we can pray to God our Heavenly Father for anything.
We can pray to God for whatever we wish, both about ourselves and about others, too.
We are thankful to God because Jesus Christ stands between us and God and brings our prayers before Him. We wish to give thanks to Jesus for being between God and us and interceding in such a way.
The crowd (people) came to Jesus, looking for Him. And they tried to keep him (Jesus) from leaving them.
I believe we can understand the feelings of those who wished Jesus to do so (not to leave them).
The people who wanted Jesus not to leave them had seen him heal many people with illnesses. People must have thought that if such an amazing person would stay with them all the time, they would be just all right now.
I believe that if Jesus were to appear before us right now and show us all kinds of miraculous works, we too would be begging Him to not leave us.
But Jesus responded to those who wished him so.
“I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent.”
Then Jesus went out and preached in the various synagogues of Judea. Jesus did not stay in one place but preached in many places.
Jesus left for another town, not because "it is my desire to do so," but because "I was sent for that purpose."
Jesus' first priority was to live according to the will of God the Heavenly Father who sent him.
Jesus continues to give us encouragement and guidance to pray and seek God's will and to live a life that walks according to God's will.
We have many wishes and desires. But since we are human and cannot see everything, it is possible that the wishes and desires we have are actually bad (or not the best) for us.
Therefore, we must pray and seek God's will rather than our wishes and desires, and then we must pray and ask God to help us to go and walk in the way He wants us to.
Jesus continued his missionary work with the conviction that “I must preach the good news of the Kingdom of God to other towns also because that is why God the Father has sent me”
Jesus would have fully felt the hearts and desires of the people who wanted him to “stay with them longer”. However, for Jesus, his primary mission was to “preach the gospel of the Kingdom of God to many more people.”
We, too, wish to remember the place far from us and those who are far from where we are, and wish to offer our prayers and offerings remembering those who serve in the work of the evangelical mission of the Kingdom of God among those who are far away.
I first came to know Jesus Christ and connected with the church in America. The church I was led to in America was a Baptist church affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, a mission organization in the United States.
When I returned to Japan, the people at the Baptist church I attended told me that they had found out that there were missionaries sent by the Southern Baptist Convention to Nagoya, Japan, where I am from.
After I returned to Nagoya, I was able to meet these missionaries. They had a deep relationship with the Nagoya Church, which became my home church, and they were serving there.
I have had some opportunities to contact several former missionaries since then until now as I am serving as a pastor.
One of them, Missionary Ernest Holloway, who was closely associated with my home church (Nagoya Baptist Church), taught me a very valuable story about Nagoya Church.
The story was that an evangelistic meeting was held at an American church (probably around 1950), and the donation collected at that time was used as the source funds to purchase the land on which Nagoya Church now stands.
I was very impressed that there were many people who prayed and gave offerings, remembering that “a church would be established in a city in Japan, and from there the gospel of Jesus would be preached to the people of Japan.”
I cannot help but be grateful when I think of the many people I have of course never met, whose faces and names I do not know, who have prayed and given their precious offerings for missionary work in my hometown from afar in a city in the United States.
The reason those people were able to think about the work of evangelism in foreign countries was that Jesus' words, "I must proclaim the gospel of the kingdom of God in other towns also" became their very own thoughts and desires.
Here in Oita, there have been many dedicated missionaries from overseas who have devoted their lives to the work of evangelism. I think it is fair to say that Beppu International Baptist Church too was born from the foundation of such missionary work.
We can support missionary work in distant lands, first with our prayers and then with our actual offerings.
We too can be connected to the work of bringing the hope of Christ to those who do not yet know Him, and the work that the gospel of the Kingdom of God of Jesus Christ is proclaimed to many people and to many nations.
“I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also”. Let us make Jesus' words our mission and serve the gospel ministry with joy.
