Ministry in South Africa

Thank you. Well, I had the privilege of being assigned the task of speaking with the Paine family, who is our missionaries to South Africa, and I had the pleasure of being able to contact them.

And fortunately, they have just returned to South Africa after being stateside for about a month and a half. And so he was eager to let me know that he would send over the PowerPoint and the narration work that he had done to present to all the churches. And so I figured he could do a lot better job filling us all in. A lot better job filling us in on his ministry than I can do here from Burlington, North Carolina. So we've got a video of him doing a narration there.

It's about 13 to 15 minutes long. We can go ahead and start that, brother, when you're ready. Kathy and I arrived in South Africa in July 1988. Learning Afrikaans equipped us to reach the 47%.

Okay. Kathy and I arrived in South Africa in July 1988. Learning Afrikaans equipped us to reach the 47% whose mother tongue is Afrikaans. We have sought to evangelize, mentor and train the mixed people group who are identified as the coloreds. In 2008, God directed us to begin a new church plant in Eindhoven Delft. We knew it would take plotting, patience and perseverance to reach and train people for Christ in a community characterized by 43% unemployment, poverty, the fourth highest rate in teenage pregnancies in the world, drugs, theft, alcohol, gang violence and lawlessness of every kind.

Why would anyone want to work here? We did not know when we began to work in Delft that it would have the highest murder rate in the Western Cape by the end of 2022. But we did know that Christ is the light of the world, and we had two promises.

Christ would be with us to the end of the age, and He would draw men to Himself if He were lifted up. Our prayer is that we would shine as lights in the world, holding forth the Word of Life in dark, dusty, dirty Delft. Eindhoven is located 20 miles east of Cape Town and is situated next to the Cape Town International Airport. Eindhoven is one of the eight subdivisions of Delft. In addition to Eindhoven, we are reaching people in suburban, Delft South, Fürburg and Ruisendall. The last published census in 2011 listed 152,000 people living within Delft's 4.2 square miles. After COVID-19, Delft was the fastest growing community in Cape Town. Today, its community health center serves a rapidly growing indigent population of over 520,000 people. Many occupy squatter camps which sprang up during the pandemic and were self-named COVID, Pandemic, 19, and Lockdown. Eindhoven Baptistic Care began with the Lord calling out a people for His name, one by one.

Let me introduce a few. In 2008, Jeremy and June opened their homes for a weekly Bible study. Jeremy was saved from a life of darkness and despair to a life of light and rejoicing. He is a dear and faithful brother. Jeremy sets up the classroom in Eindhoven Primary School where we meet for regular Sunday services and whole Sunday school. He also preaches regularly and studies in our Bible Institute. He loves to witness and is active on visitation and outreach. Jonty and Tracy began visiting our church when their oldest daughter had a role in the yearly Sunday school program. In 2007, Jonty and Tracy came to faith in Christ in our lounge. After completing discipleship classes, Jonty was baptized in February 2018 and then assisted me in baptizing Tracy.

This is the only time I have practiced infant baptism, as Tracy was expecting their third child. Jonty helps Jeremy set up our classroom. He also helps in our Sunday school, does our Sunday scripture reading, and preaches on a rotation.

Tracy is a qualified nursing sister and makes good use of her skills and outreach in the community. Rodney and Riconder have been faithful members since 2016. Rodney helps lead services and has regular preaching opportunities. He has answered the call to gospel ministry and recently submitted his doctrinal statement to our Ordination Council. He desires to be ordained in a few months. About eight years ago, John, better known as Bogey, came to Christ a year after attending church, along with his young daughter Lydia. He faithfully continues to bring Lydia and her little sister Riley and several cousins.

Bogey's wife, Glenice, occasionally attends. Sadly, she paused her studies through the Afrikaans translation of the exchange when she came under much conviction. Through this translation of the exchange, Elizabeth came to Christ in 2015.

And Serena in 2017. In June 2019, we initiated a blood pressure monitoring ministry. It is a great means of making contacts and sharing the gospel. We set up our church banner, gazebo, table and chairs, and then some of our ladies circulate to enlist people to have their blood pressure taken. Our nurses are Kathy and Tracy, my wife and my spiritual daughter.

They are my two favorite nurses. We began this ministry in a vacant lot in Entwoven, but have moved across the street to the Delft Mall, where we meet more people. Tracy and Kathy do a general health screening, give the results, and a gospel tract to each patient. Using the tract, our men explain the gospel to each person and invite them to visit our church. We have found this ministry to be most effective when we have our church ladies make the initial contact with the shoppers. Their friendly, gentle, and kind demeanor allays shoppers' suspicions about our motives. During COVID-19, we were not permitted to assemble an Entwoven primary school where we had been since 2009, so we met in our backyard.

Backyard services may sound romantic, but in winter months, there is nothing romantic about sitting outside in cold weather, trying to pay attention when your whole body is numb. Entwoven Baptiste Kerk is praying for suitable property for their own building. We have pursued two different state-owned plots of land, but both are currently unavailable. Delft's median age is 27.6 years old, and almost 32% of the population in Entwoven are children under 15. Many have no direction, no dreams, no tangible goals, no skills, no motivation, and few, if any, good role models. We are burdened for these youth and are trying to reach them, especially our own church children. Last year, God provided for us to begin a new ministry with the children and youth through music when Dr. Tim Berry of Gospel Fellowship Association of Missions encouraged GFA missionary Sarah Morris to come out to help us. Sarah ministered with us from September to December 2022 through her gifting in music. Sarah encouraged us to realize the potential of training our nationals to become musicians. This year, Lydia Bacharik provided lessons for our students during a visit in May and again in early August. From June to August during her six-week GFA internship, Melody's brother, Joe, joined us for two weeks in July, lending his help during our four-day music camp. He also ministered along with Dr. Berry's son, James, at the Multi-Church Men's Retreat.

Dr. Berry was our guest speaker and spoke to 60 men on the theme, Till the Whole World Knows. When Melody, Joe, and James provided several sacred concerts at sister churches, the pastor spoke of the need to train our people and motivate them to develop a love for Christ-honoring music. The churches in South Africa need godly, gifted musicians to help train a generation of national musicians for our local churches. Most of our churches use recorded music. Delft is just one area in the Western Cape where laborers in church planting and music are needed.

A family who lives an hour away in Atlantis have been asking for help for over a year. They desire a Bible study that could become a church plant. Another potential church plant is in the city of Mitchell's Plain, only five miles southwest of Eindhoven.

It has a population of almost one million. Our Bible Institute meets in Mitchell's Plain at L'Intechir Bible Baptist Church. While there may be other churches that preach the gospel, this church is the only conservative, fundamental church which is committed to biblical exposition that we are aware of in Mitchell's Plain. Pray that the Lord of Harvest would send forth laborers. That video was almost a little bit shorter than I was anticipating it to be, but it was about 15 minutes long, and I went into Pastor Carnes' office strutting like a peacock, thinking that I didn't really have much work to do as far as the presentation went, thinking that his would satisfy the time. That is until he sent it to me around 10 o'clock on Friday morning, and I realized it was only 15 minutes.

So I knew I needed to go prepare some sort of material, but Reagan said, you don't really have to prepare anything. You could become their favorite pastor and let them go, but I figured that we need to at least look at something a little bit here together tonight. So while I was looking for a passage of scripture that would go along with the theme that we are considering here, I came across John 20, 21. The resurrected Christ has appeared physically to his disciples, and as he lays eyes upon them, he gives them two forms of greeting that are just repetitions, and it is a soothing one at that.

He says, peace be to you. The question that I want us to ponder here tonight as we look at the charge that comes after that is the question of how does the incarnation of Jesus Christ influence a heart for missions in the church? As we are summarizing our time and our missions focus, and as we are entering into the Christmas season and contemplating the coming of Christ, the incarnation of the Lord, I feel like it would be a good opportunity to marry these two and ask ourselves, how does the incarnation as we contemplate that in this Christmas season influence our hearts for mission mindedness as followers of Christ? Now you see in greater context, Christ has now risen victoriously from the grave and has presented himself to his disciples in a physical body, in his physical body.

As he addresses them, he greets them with a soothing greeting of peace twice, followed by the charge that we will find ourselves examining here this evening. In this assignment, it is made clear that Jesus is commissioning his followers as the Father has sent him, and that their task would be to carry the gospel of Jesus Christ to the whole world, and that it is through this spirit empowered gospel mission that souls would find the forgiveness of sins. This is what we found in our reading just momentarily. This is what is seen in verses 21 through 23. Now with this in mind, I want us to fall back to verse 21. Verse 21 says, Peace to you, as the Father has sent me, I also send you.

This evening we will be exploring how the incarnation or the bodily assumption of Jesus Christ influences our own burden for the souls of men around us. The question stems from the statement that Christ made concerning the Father sending him. The question that we need to ask ourselves here is exactly why did the Father send Jesus in the first place? In short, the Son of God came into the world to redeem men from their sins. In John chapter 1, verse number 12, the Bible says, But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become the children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And in John 3.16, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. You see in the beginning, God created mankind for his glory, to be as it were a reflective mirror, to present his glory into his created world, to subdue it and to cultivate this world for his glory and to fill it with image bearers.

But something went wrong. Our Father rebelled against our Father, that is Adam, rebelled against God, and with the fall of Adam, we all fell with him. We are eternally lost, separated relationally from God, and we are bound in our sins. But in Genesis 3.15 stands a diamond that glimmers forth as God presents them a promise that there is going to be one who is going to come and his heel will be struck by the serpent, but that same bruised heel is going to crush that serpent's head. There's going to be a deliverer who's going to come and to Adam they learn he's going to be a human, a human deliverer. And all of this foreshadows Christ and this is a beautiful thing that the eternal unending Son of God stepped into time. And he added to himself a human nature that he could come and to as it were walk a mile in our shoes, but to do it perfectly like we have never been capable of doing. Now it's a good thing to add here because some music that you might hear this holiday season or some sermons that you may hear or some Facebook post would insinuate that Christ has in some form taken some of his divinity off of himself or laid aside some of his attributes. That's wrong.

That's wrong. And as a heresy, God cannot change his nature. The Son of God added to his divine nature sonship. He never became less God. And what's so beautiful about this is we need to understand that there was never a time when the Son of God was not.

He's always been. And what's so beautiful about him invading time is that he has added to himself a human nature that will never cease to be in accompaniment with his deity. Now think about that for a moment.

But before the earth spun upon her axis, the sun was there. And as he penetrates time through this virgin womb, he adds to himself a nature that's never going to go anywhere. That's unfathomable. And it's a beautiful thing.

I think we'll contemplate a little bit more later on. Through the Incarnation, Christ walks a mile in our shoes. He does what we cannot do. He suffers like we suffer. He's tempted greater than we've ever been, but he doesn't fail.

So he doesn't deserve to die. But he bears upon himself all the judgment that belongs to us upon the tree that we might be forgiven. We could say this, that the Son of God became a son of man, that the son of men might become sons of God.

But this is not only the case. Christ did die. And as I mentioned it to the teens today, it's a beautiful thing that the Son of God cannot only sympathize with us in the trials of this life. He can walk with us in the shadow of death. And it's also an interesting thing that even in tasting death, Christ knows what it's like to be separated, soul from body. And so for our brothers and sisters who are in heaven now, he understands their longing to be united, body and soul, again.

And we'll bring it to pass in the last day. And not only that, but he has resurrected from the dead. And he has ascended into the heavenlies and sits at the right hand of the Father. And we being in him are already there. He has assumed us within himself as this covenant people. And as he has conquered death, hell and the grave and has seated himself at the right hand of the Father, we are already there with him. That is a beautiful, a matchless thing to contemplate that we are secure and we are already there. And through this pilgrimage, all the hardships that we face, he says, I can sympathize with that.

And I didn't fail. And so I'm here as Hebrews 2 tells us that he can aid his people in the midst of their sufferings. 1 John 3, verse 1 through 3, I preached it a few months ago, mentions that one day we are going to see him. And we are going to see him like he is, full of glory.

And we will be like him. And what does this mean for us in regard to missions? Well, I think there's a few things about the Son of God stepping into time that kind of infiltrates our minds and causes us to think mission-mindedly. And the first point that I want us to consider here tonight is this. The incarnation calls us to assume our identity as partakers in his mission.

Let me show you how I get this. In Matthew 4.19, you're more than welcome to turn there with me. I'll turn there and we will read that passage together in Matthew 4.

Matthew 4.19, the Lord is walking beside the Sea of Galilee. And in verse 18 it says, In Jesus walking by the Sea of Galilee saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net to the sea, for they were fishermen. Then he said to them, You follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

They immediately left their nets, and they followed him. Now what is intriguing to me is that if we aren't careful, we can read right past that fishers of men statement there. And what I find intriguing is that that passage there isn't speaking of, I will make you people who will be performing the act of fishing for men, though that isn't telling that. It's not a verb, I will make you fishers of men.

It's a noun. And so what I believe is being perpetrated here is Jesus essentially insinuating, if you will follow me, I will make you something you're not. These were blue collar fishermen.

They are fishing for fish. And as Jesus looks at them and he calls them to follow him, he is saying, I will make you into something you're not. I will make you fishers of men. And as I was looking into this, it struck me that fishers is not used as though it was a verb communicating an action that is performed and not performed.

It's used as a noun. Christ is saying, I'll make you something new. To put it plainly, in following Christ, our very identities are changed, and from that relationship there will flow a life of fishing for men. It's who we are. It's not just when we follow him, we just are going to make ourselves. It flows from our being as his followers. You are a fisher of men.

And what I'm getting at is this. In Hebrews 2, 9, we read, But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that he, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone. And from this, we understand that Jesus assumed a human nature for our redemption. And since that is the case, I am arguing that as we meditate on the Incarnation this Christmas, I think we should be reminded that since Jesus assumed a human nature for my salvation, I should likewise, as his follower, embrace my identity as a fisher of men. This isn't just a stale and passionless command given as though Jesus is a stern dictator saying, Well, I've done my part.

Now you do yours. Remember, what is the two things that he repeated in our scriptures for the night? Peace be unto you.

Peace be to you. Jesus is concerned about his people. And all throughout his farewells and the Gospels, he supports them with peace. He girds them up with his grace.

And with the assurance of his presence, and with the assurance of his power being with them, he understands the difficulty of this task, and he girds them with such difficulty with his peace, with his peace. As you contemplate the Incarnation this Christmas season, may we ask ourselves as we are following the one who has walked this path before us, are we allowing this identity to flow through us and to reach those around us? I think that's an interesting contemplation for us to have. The second thing is that the Incarnation reminds us that we are victorious.

Earlier I made mention of the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. And from that we come away with a few things. We understand the importance of God's view of the human body.

This is not a worthless meat bag that we are walking around in. God values these bodies. They are made in his image.

And so we see the value of them. We learn that the resurrection of the dead will be a physical resurrection, and that our brothers and sisters in heaven tonight have a reunion to look forward to with those bodies, and they will be perfected bodies at that. But another thing that is important to highlight is that in this resurrection, Jesus has conquered death, hell, and the grave. The prophecy says that you will not allow your beloved to see corruption, and Christ has come forth from corruption.

And since he is alive, so is his mission. When it looked like the calls of Christ were over, his friends and followers, they forsook him. But remember what he said to Peter in Matthew 16, 18. He says, And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Since Jesus is alive and reigns from heaven tonight, we are assured that the calls of Christ is alive and it is well and it cannot be stopped. In Matthew 16, 18, Jesus uses the word gates and he uses the word prevail, a defensive term and an offensive term.

This defensive and offensive language is communicating that the church is going to stand, and even though the kingdom of evil seems as though it is prevailing, the church will never be destroyed. She is victorious. She will not be knocked from her foundation.

She will always prevail. My mission will not be stopped. And when Jesus died, it looked as though it was over, but in his resurrection it is declared. It's not going anywhere.

It's not going anywhere. Since Jesus is alive and well, so is his mission. And what the incarnation should call us to consider tonight is why are we so prone to being ashamed of the gospel?

Why are we so prone to being ashamed of the gospel? Do we doubt our own personal effectiveness or whether we're qualified? Well, in the Old Testament, you see the Holy Spirit being poured out upon prophets, priests, and kings to endow them for the offices that they are being put into. And the interesting thing, though, is that in the New Testament, Peter uses prophet, priest, and kingling language to concern the church, and that same spirit that endowed these Old Testament saints with power for those offices is the same spirit that has been poured out upon every single one of you following Pentecost. Do you feel like you were ineffective? Well, the same spirit that laid upon the kings and the priests and the prophets is the same spirit that sits upon each and every one of us who are in Christ.

The results are not up to you and me. Faithfulness is our calling. Do we doubt the effectiveness of the gospel? God forbid that, Paul tells us in Romans 1, it's the very power of God and salvation.

Are we paralyzed by the fear of rejection? Jesus says if they hate us, it's because they hated him first. Beloved, tonight we must remember that when we give the gospel, we give it with a 100% success rate because it is God who brings the results, and our job is to be faithful to that which leads us to our final point. The incarnation calls us to go out into the world. The incarnation calls us, it challenges us, it beckons us out into the world. In the Old Testament, God commands the wondering Jews to build a tabernacle and that his presence would be among them wherever they go. That same language is used in John 1.14. It says, and the word became flesh and dwelt or tabernacled among them, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And as he ascended into heaven, what we read in our text tonight is that Jesus breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. That's a foreshadowing of Acts 2 at Pentecost. And this is symbolizing a permanent temple-like dwelling of God with his people as the Spirit now indwells us. And you say, well, isn't there a sense in which in eternity we are going to dwell with him in a fuller sense?

Yes. And I think that the fact that those two are connected causes us to realize that eternity has already begun for the believer. We are already dwelling with him permanently.

It has started now. He dwells us as a spirit and there will be a final day where we'll be together, but it has already begun now. And he dwells with us now and he empowers us now and he fellowships with us now. In Matthew 28, 18, Jesus came and spoke to them saying, all authority is given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you and lo, I am with you always, even until the end of the age.

Amen. One of the saddest indictments on the church today is that we have forgotten how to be a friend of sinners. Much of Christianity has fallen into hiding in our own little tiny Christian bubbles and complaining about how lost sinners are out there acting like lost sinners. Beloved, since we became followers of Christ, our whole lives are mission trips, the whole thing. There is a capital M mission. It's the mission of God to bring his elect to himself and to have the earth full of his glory.

But then there's these tiny M missions. It's the daily task carried out of believers to bring the gospel to the lost among us. Since you were saved, your whole life is a missions trip. You're a missionary to your children who do not know Christ. You're a missionary to your spouse who does not know Christ. You're a missionary in the workplace to those who don't know Christ. You're a missionary at the sports outings of those who don't know Christ.

You are a missionary wherever you go. We carry out missions to fulfill the great mission, that mission of bringing his elect unto himself. And we don't know who they are, so we preach a whosoever will gospel. And the great thing about that is where does the will come from? It comes from him and we know that the results lay in his lap. And as we preach the gospel, he's going to bring them to himself. They're not getting away from him. We will be successful.

We will be successful. To the teens, it's almost like a divine Easter egg hunt when we go out and witness. We don't know who he's begun to soften.

We don't know who he might be pleased to call unto himself. And it's almost a time of jubilance to see in their eyes as you witness to them Christ becoming real to them for the first time. They are made to see their sin and to see the glory of Christ. And they latch onto him with a hand of faith.

No matter how weak it might be, they grasp a hold of the same Christ that you have. And it's a blessing. It's a privilege to carry that into the world. We must go out into the world to share the gospel, to minister to the broken and needy, to show them the love of Christ and to pray that Christ might give them saving faith. This is our job. This is who we are. We are fishermen of men.

That's our identity. It would be a delightful and otherworldly thing if the Lord allowed our congregation here in Burlington to get a hold of the reality that aliments might know Christ. They might know Christ.

I know it is easy. I know there is difficulty and hardship involved in this, but I have good news for you. Hebrews 2 17-18 says, Therefore, in all things, he had to be made like his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make a propitiation for the sins of the people, for in that he himself has suffered being tempted, he is able to aid those who are tempted. That phrase there, merciful and faithful high priest, according to John Owen, says, It means that Christ is ready to take our cares to his heart, and he seeks to soothe them on his own, and that his faithfulness is his precious and unwavering commitment to us as his people. Verse 18 gives an even sweeter piece as it shows us that in the Incarnation, Christ suffered like we did, but he didn't fail. He can sympathize with you and I in our nervousness, in our heartache, and he can provide deliverance in the hour of temptation because he overcame it all. So one said the other day, since Christ could not fall into sin, does that mean that his temptations are mute? That they don't really matter? That he didn't really experience it?

No. The fact that Jesus could not fall into sin meant that the fullest of temptations wave came crashing upon him, and he still did not break. For you and I, there's not much temptation that we can bear before we begin to crumble. And Christ, while we have taken drops, has assumed an ocean of temptation, and he never crumbled underneath it. It is my prayer for our church family that God will allow us to be a mission-minded people, that he might be pleased to call men and women from our church to pursue a life of daily mission, that he might see fit to raise men to serve in pastoral ministry, raise teachers in the church. The interesting thing about believing in sovereign grace is knowing not only does salvation belong to the Lord, but we also know that the Holy Spirit is sovereign in dispensing gifts to his people. And as Christ is building his church here in Burlington, we have what we need as the Spirit is equipping his people with gifts to contribute to our calls here in Burlington. May the Lord bring it to light in our hearts and lives what our callings are and help us to cultivate them and to be faithful in carrying them out.

May the Lord see to it that Beacon is revolutionized as we consider our purpose as a people sent out on mission for God's glory and for the good of our neighbor. I think the Incarnation influences a lot, and it's almost a shame that we only consider it for four weeks a year. Without the Incarnation, there is no Christian faith.

Without the Incarnation, there is no hope for the world. And so as we consider that, let this be not just a temporal time of contemplation, but may it serve as a launching point as we launch into a new year to think of what Christ has done for us and how that influences us to be a faithful people living on mission for the glory of God. This is John 20 for us here this evening. Let us pray. Dear kind and gracious Heavenly Father, it is by your grace and mercy alone that we have been privileged to gather together here tonight. You have brought us, your people, together by grace, and it is by kind providence that you have kept us safe and healthy. We should not take that for granted, and we should pause to consider our brothers and sisters who are struggling with health even here tonight. I pray that you might be with them, with their physicians, and you might gird them about with grace. But I pray also for the hurting in our community, that we might be mindful of their sufferings as Christ has been mindful of our own sinful agony and he came to us. May we, as your body, be mindful of our identity as fishers of men. And may we go forward serving you faithfully and trusting that the results lie in your hand alone. It is in Christ's name we pray. Amen.