1. At the end of World War II, when General Douglas MacArthur took command of the Japanese islands, he insisted that Emperor Hirohito admit that he was not a god, nor was he a descendant of the gods.
2. Since these were part of the terms of surrender, the emperor agreed. Recognizing the great spiritual need, General MacArthur called for the churches to send 500 missionaries to Japan.
3. But only 55 missionaries went to Japan, and sadly, Japan continued in darkness and idolatry.
4. In Luke 24:46-49, our Lord said we are to preach the Gospel to "all nations." He told His disciples, "Ye are witnesses of these things."
5. In Acts 1:8, our Lord said to His disciples, "But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."
6. Let me remind you: we are all witnesses. The word "witness" is used one way or another 29 times in the book of Acts. The book of Acts is all about witnessing, planting churches, and sending out missionaries.
7. Warren Wiersbe said, "As Christians, we are not judges or prosecuting attorneys sent to condemn the world. We are witnesses who point to Jesus Christ and tell lost sinners how to be saved. Witnessing is not something that we do for the Lord; it is something that He does through us, if we are filled with the Holy Spirit."
8. Peter and John said to the religious leaders in Jerusalem, "For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:20).
9. Most here are probably familiar with Proverbs 11:30 – "He that winneth souls is wise." But how about Proverbs 14:25? "A true witness delivereth souls." Are you a true witness?
10. The Great Commission was not a command meant only for the apostolic church. It is for every true Bible-preaching church.
11. And the Great Commission is not to the missionary alone, or to the pastor or evangelist, etc.
12. The Great Commission was given to the entire body of Christ. Luke 24:47 and Acts 1:8 tell us that the Great Commission is to go and proclaim the Gospel, whether it is in our own community, or to the utter most parts of the earth.

I. THE MESSAGE OF THE GREAT COMMISSION (24:46).

1. Throughout His earthly ministry, our Lord repeatedly told His disciples that He had to die on the cross for our sins and rise from the dead the third day (cf. Luke 9:22).
2. There are many religions in this world. And these religions all have some system of ethics, some set of rules to live by. But only the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins. Not Buddha, not Mohammed, not Allah, not the pope, etc.
3. Only Jesus saves. He is the only way to heaven. He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:6).
4. Many people object to this but they cannot deny that this is what the Bible clearly teaches.
5. Some day you and I must stand before God. And we will either stand in the filthy rags of our own self-righteousness, or we will stand in the imputed righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ.
6. Isaiah 64:6 says, "But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags..."
7. Second Corinthians 5:21 says, "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."
8. Therefore, when God looks at the sinner who has trusted Jesus Christ as his Saviour, He does not see a guilty, hell-bound sinner but He sees a sinner redeemed, pardoned, cleansed, and forgiven – a sinner saved by God’s grace.
9. Many of the Christians in the church at Corinth were very wicked before they were saved. They had been fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate homosexuals, perverts, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, and extortioners.
10. But I Corinthians 6:11 says, "And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God."
11. And this is all because the Lord Jesus Christ went to the cross and died on the cross for our sins (Luke 24:46).
12. This is the message sinners need to hear. Our Lord said in Mark 16:15, 16, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned."

II. THE PREACHING OF THE GREAT COMMISSION

1. Repentance is an important doctrinal word, found all throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament (cf. Luke 13:1-5).
2. Repentance must precede revival. We see this all throughout the Bible. The LORD sent Jonah to Nineveh to preach repentance. Jonah preached, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown" (Jonah 3:4).
3. Our Lord said, "The men of Nineveh...repented at the preaching of Jonah" (Matthew 12:41).
4. Ezekiel 14:6 says, "Thus saith the Lord GOD; Repent, and turn yourselves from your idols; and turn away your faces from all your abominations."
5. The Lord Jesus said, "They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Mark 2:17).
6. Acts 20:21 says, "Testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ."
7. Sometimes, the word "repent" is not used but the doctrine of repentance is taught (cf. I Thess. 1:9).
8. Someone asked one of the professors at my Bible college, "What comes first, repentance or faith?" and he replied, "If John Smith walks through the door, who comes in first, John or Smith?"
9. In other words, repentance and faith are inseparable. They are two sides to the same coin.
10. Biblical repentance is not what the RCC calls "penance." To do penance is to atone for your sins but according to the Bible, Jesus has already atoned for our sins.

Christ has for sin atonement made, What a wonderful Saviour!
We are redeemed! The price is paid! What a wonderful Saviour!

11. Furthermore, repentance is not remorse over the consequences of one’s sins. Repentance is more than remorse, though repentance includes remorse.
12. Repentance is not self-reformation. Many people start going to church, they stop drinking, they clean themselves up – but they still are not saved. They have not received Christ as their Saviour.
13. Repentance is not restitution, but those who are truly repentant will seek to make restitution (cf. Zaccheus – Luke 19:8).
14. A.C. Dixon said, “In repentance you think of the sin you hate; in faith you think of the Christ you love.”

III. POWER FOR THE GREAT COMMISSION

1. Our Lord said, "And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high" (Luke 24:49).
2. This enduement of power is the fullness of the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 1:8).
3. The word "endued" literally means "clothed" or "to put on."
4. The same Greek word is translated "clothed" in Mark 1:6, where the Bible says John the Baptist "was clothed with camel's hair."
5. The same word is translated "put on" in Luke 12:22, where our Lord said, "Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on."
6. People often put a great emphasis on what they put on, but they should be more interested in being filled with the Holy Spirit.
7. Ephesians 5:18 says, "And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit." This is a command.
8. Romans 13:14 says, "But put ye on (same word as "endued") the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof."
9. I read about an old Welsh coal miner who was saved during the great Welsh revival of 1859. He said, “When I was a boy we dug out coal with chisels; after that we started using dynamite, and then we got a much larger quantity of coal. Before the revival I have seen nothing but chisel work in our churches, but now God’s dynamite is at work!”
10. Let us pray and ask the Lord for His power in fulfilling the Great Commission. In Luke 11:13, our Lord said, "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?"
11. Evangelist R. A. Torrey wrote a small booklet entitled, Why God Used D. L. Moody. In this booklet, R.A. Torrey said:

My subject is "Why God Used D. L. Moody," and I can think of no subject upon which I would rather speak. For I shall not seek to glorify Mr. Moody, but the God who by His grace, His entirely unmerited favor, used him so mightily, and the Christ who saved him by His atoning death and resurrection life, and the Holy Spirit who lived in him and wrought through him and who alone made him the mighty power that he was to this world. Furthermore: I hope to make it clear that the God who used D. L. Moody in his day is just as ready to use you and me, in this day, if we, on our part, do what D. L. Moody did, which was what made it possible for God to so abundantly use him.

The whole secret of why D. L. Moody was such a mightily used man you will find in Psalm 62:11: "God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this; that power belongeth unto God." I am glad it does. I am glad that power did not belong to D. L. Moody; I am glad that it did not belong to Charles G. Finney; I am glad that it did not belong to Martin Luther; I am glad that it did not belong to any other Christian man whom God has greatly used in this world's history. Power belongs to God. If D. L. Moody had any power, and he had great power, he got it from God.

But God does not give His power arbitrarily. It is true that He gives it to whomsoever He will, but He wills to give it on certain conditions, which are clearly revealed in His Word; and D. L. Moody met those conditions and God made him the most wonderful preacher of his generation; yes, I think the most wonderful man of his generation.

12. R.A. Torrey went on to say, "It seemed to me that there were seven things in the life of D. L. Moody that accounted for God's using him so largely as He did," and then Torrey listed the seven things.
13. D. L. Moody was a fully surrendered man.
14. He was a man of prayer.
15. He was a deep and practical student of the Bible.
16. He was a humble man.
17. He was free from the love of money.
18. He had a consuming passion for the salvation of lost sinners.
19. And D. L. Moody had a very definite enduement with power from on High -- he was filled with the Holy Spirit. All biographies of D.L. Moody emphasize this.
20. C.I. Scofield preached D.L. Moody’s funeral. This is what he said, “The secrets of D.L. Moody’s power were: First, in a definite experience of Christ’s saving grace. He had passed out of death into life, and he knew it. Secondly, he believed in the divine authority of the Scriptures. The Bible was to him the voice of God, and he made it resound as such in the consciences of men. Thirdly, he was baptized (meaning “filled”) with the Holy Spirit, and he knew it. It was to him as definite an experience as his conversion.”
21. Our Lord said in Luke 11:13, "How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?"
22. The Bible says, "Ye have not, because ye ask not" (James 4:2).
23. Our Lord referred to the power of the Holy Spirit as "the promise of my Father" (Luke 24:49). In John chapters 14--16, we see the promise of the Father mentioned several times.
24. In John 14:16 and 17, our Lord said, "And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you."
25. In Acts 2:39, Peter said, "For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call."

CONCLUSION:

1. Next week we will have our annual missions conference.
2. Oswald Smith was a Canadian pastor, author, and missions advocate. He popularized the Faith Promise Missions Offering, and his church in Toronto gave many millions of dollars to missions.
3. In addition to being a strong mission-minded church, Oswald Smith's church was a great soulwinning church. The two (soulwinning & missions) go together (Luke 24:47).
4. Oswald Smith used to say, "The light that shines the farthest will shine the brightest at home."
5. By God's grace, may our light shine bright here in Elmont, and to "the uttermost part of the earth."