Making Disciples in the Poorest of Countries - Barry Grant | CGS 2022

Lesson Transcript

Good morning. Well, I'm excited to be here this morning. Um, I don't know why we're all here. If we're here just because we're here, or we're here because we're interested in in church planting or what the reason is. But it's exciting to me to have a group of people together to talk about this topic. I feel like it's the Lord's will and His burden as well. I have little experience, and I feel like there's a number of you brothers that would be better off up here speaking instead of me.

But, uh, I trust that we don't come across I don't come across as knowing something and you don't know it. Also, uh, come across as negative. Um, I do have a burden, and sometimes when I share my burden, it can come across as negative. I don't this is the second time I've been to Pennsylvania. I know very few of you. So maybe the experiences that I've had and the things that I've learned, you all have learned long ago. But either way, we'll see.

And I'll share here today, and we'll we'll just pray that the Lord blesses our time together. But talking about making disciples, the title of the message is Making Disciples in the Poorest of Countries. But I thought first we'll talk a little bit about making disciples. We know the life of Jesus after He came to the earth and His ministry began. He was baptized, then He was driven into the mountain where He fasted for 40 days. And then after that, He went right into making disciples, did He not?

Um, He walked about and He picked out who He wanted to follow Him. And it was it was the life of Jesus. And we think of Jesus as having 12 disciples. And maybe that was the case. But we know in Luke ten, it talks about how He sent 70 out. And I wonder who those 70 were. And I like to think of them as disciples of Jesus as well. And maybe there was another 70 that weren't mentioned. And maybe there were hundreds of disciples. But one man had a vision for making disciples.

I also think that it's important to note that in Matthew 28, when Jesus gives the Great Commission, He could have said a lot of things. I've thought about that. Someone's last words to a people are usually the most important words that He can come up with. We think of people on their deathbed or someone that is going to be executed. They're given their last words. Jesus's last words were, "Go ye therefore and teach all nations." The word "teach" there in the Greek is "mathato," which means to disciple.

And so we can see by this that it was very important to Jesus the account there in Mark 16, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." And then a few verses later, in verse 20, it says that they went forth and preached. They heard Jesus's heart. They knew what was important to Jesus, and that's what they went out and did. Now here, 2000 years later, we're still talking about this same topic. We're still trying to get the burden of making disciples to, uh, to spark our churches.

We also know that it says in First John chapter two, verse six, that he that saith, he abideth in him, also to walk even as he walked. So we're supposed to do what Jesus did. And Jesus did many things. And we can think of many things that He did. And I'm not trying to highlight something over another. But in my opinion, we lack on this area of making disciples.

With all of that focus on what Jesus was trying to get across to make disciples, His last words in the Great Commission, "Go and make disciples, teach and preach." Unfortunately, there are many Christians today that have never made one disciple. And what's worse than that is there are many Christians that die, never even have tried to make a disciple. It's the world that we live in here in America. It seems to be put on the back burner. And I have to think of the parable of the talents.

And take it a bit out of context. Maybe. Jesus shows us how to make disciples. He lives that out in His life here on this earth. And then He commands us to go as He did and make disciples in all nations. And then on Judgment Day, we come before Him and He asks us, "How many disciples have you made?" And maybe that question will not be asked. But what if it was?

And we say there before the Lord Jesus on that terrible day, "Well, Lord, I I didn't make any disciples." We know what the end was to the man in the parable, the talents that came back with nothing but what he was given. Maybe this isn't reality, but it speaks to my heart and motivates me. The reality is this: if we are not making disciples here where we are, we're not going to be going somewhere else and making disciples.

It seems to be it's very popular in our culture to avoid doing it here, but we're willing to do it somewhere else. We can't overlook our neighbors and then march off to the mission field to some poor country and expect things to go well. It won't work that way. I've seen this tried many times. A pastor friend of mine was talking to his congregation about their desire to go into the city and to do some preaching and handing out tracts and that. And the pastor said that he didn't think it was wise to do that.

And that struck me as kind of odd. I always imagine this dear brother as someone that had a heart for for the lost.

When he was asked, "Why does he look at it that way?" He said, "If we're avoiding helping our neighbors, we should not be thinking about going into the city." When I drive by a brother's house and I see his neighbor's lawnmower broke down in his front yard and the weeds are growing up all around it and there's been no communication to help, there's been no communication to try to see if there's a need. But then that brother wants to march off somewhere else.

He said, "I don't think God will bless that." Is there truth to that? I told the story of the analogy before of a man that's looking out over his, uh, his lawn to his neighbor's house, and he sees a U-Haul truck backed up, and his neighbors seem to be moving. He asks his wife, "Did you hear about the neighbors moving?" "No, we we we didn't hear anything about that." So he walks over to his neighbor's house and he says, "It looks like you're moving.

Can I ask where you're going?" He said, "We're going overseas to be missionaries." He goes home and tells his wife, "I didn't even know they were Christians." If we're not making disciples here amongst our own people, amongst the people around us, we need to forget about making disciples in the poorest of countries. And that may say that may sound hard, and I don't want I don't want it to sound hard. I want it to just be a reality to us. Because we need a burden within us to make disciples.

It needs to be something within us that we want to do no matter who it is standing before us. Because I'll be honest with you, it's easier to witness to someone that's poor than it is to witness to someone that's wealthy. And I'll tell you the reason why, in my opinion, because we have a misconception of what is the priority in our lives. And we think that God is a means to the American dream. It's in our culture. It's been bred into us.

And so when we see a man that's wealthy, he has the nice car, we don't really feel like we have anything to offer him. And he dies and goes to hell. But the poor man that has nothing, we think that now we have something to offer the poor man. And so we preach the gospel to him. And this is why our mission efforts fail, I do believe. Because the poor people can tell what the motive is. The poor people can tell what we're trying to do.

Now, I realize many of you come here and you're serious about church planning, and I love that. And I don't want to squash that at all on anyone here. I want to build that up. There are many areas in my life that I want you to help me build up. I lack in many areas with this. But a question, a hard question that I've been asking myself in the last ten months. Is America qualified to do this? Is America qualified to go into poor countries and make disciples? It's a hard question.

But I believe a lot of Americans think that because we have money, we are now qualified. We don't really need a burden. We don't really need a calling. We don't need a passion for the Lord Jesus Christ. We need money. And that qualifies us to go to the mission field. And I'm just going to be honest with you, money hurts us. It hurts our endeavors in these poor countries. It hurts our endeavors here in America. I trust that our hearts are right when we think that money is the answer.

I trust our hearts are right, and I hope that we can hear me. But in reality, I do believe it's the truth, and it's a hard truth. People say, "Well, well, Barry, we need money." And to that, I say boldly, we don't need money. We need Jesus. Can we say that? Jesus Christ says, "Don't worry about that. I'll take care of that. We need men with a burden for the lost. We need a we need we need a group of people that desire to follow me, do as I did, say what I said, go where I went." And that is where we lack.

I think we would all agree here today that we don't lack in the money part. Maybe we should cancel some of our benefit suffers and have some more prayer meetings. Amen. In Haiti. Haiti is a very small country. I'm sure we all know where Haiti is, but it's just a tiny little country on the map. But billions and billions and billions of dollars are flowing into that country each year, and the country is getting worse. There is humanitarian aid all over that country, and the country is getting worse.

Should God's people be doing the same thing? That is my burden and my question today. Do we not have something better for these people than a handout? God, help us. There was an earthquake last year, and I'll admit my mind works a little different than most people's minds. And I realize I have a lot of things that I don't see right. But when that earthquake hit, I thought about souls. I thought about people losing everything and then being opened to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Maybe that's because where I was at, it took that for me. So I grabbed my Bible. And I go down there and I see just what I saw: a bunch of destruction. But I also seen humanitarian aid, U.S. aid organizations, governments, helicopters flocking in. Containers. And that is good and fine. But I thought, I have something that I want to give these people that these other people can't give them. Is that arrogant? I hope it's not.

But I went up to the place where it was the hardest hit, and I seen all the houses were down flat. People were trying to bury, unbury loved ones. A very real situation. And all I could think of was building a church, just a structure of some sort, and holding some meetings for these people, bringing them in and telling them about Jesus. And it sounded like a great idea. I got excited about it. I talked to some other people that were involved, and everyone got excited about it. And so we did.

Over the next two days, I had this very simple structure built on a flat piece of ground. And I thought, you know what? We can come here and we can do what we want. We could raise money. We can build houses. That's easy to do. It really is easy to do. But at the end of the day, is that going to help these people? Is it going to prepare them for the next earthquake that maybe they're not so fortunate in? So we bring them in and we have Bible studies. We have we preach in the evenings. We get to know these people.

We build relationships. And then guess what? If God says, "Build them a house," that's easy. We can do that. I had it all planned out. And then someone finally told me, "Brother Barry, you have a lot going on. How do you think you can do this? How can you come here and preach each evening? You need to be on the other side of the country." That's fine, I replied, for I am just one man. We need to get some people down here to come and preach the gospel. Yes, yes, that's true. We'll send out the word.

It never happened. America didn't respond to that request. I do find it ironic that when money was asked for, they responded. When builders were asked for, America responded. But when we need people to preach the gospel, to make disciples, there was no response. We can go to poor countries to preach the gospel. Or at least that's what we say. But is it true? It seems like we get hung up on the poverty. And that consumes us, and the gospel is forgotten.

Now, I want to say again, maybe I'm talking to the wrong group of people here, and we have a bunch of preachers that everyone would have responded to that call. But maybe there's one person here that I'm talking to. But I want to tell you, it's easy to go and help the poor. In fact, it's fun, and a lot of people are doing it. It feels good to help the poor. It feels good to hand somebody something they need. There is a lot of people that are doing that, and I'm not saying we should stop doing that. Please hear me.

But there's a reason why we have a lot of people doing that and very few people preaching the true gospel of Jesus Christ. One is difficult, and it brings persecution. And one is easy, and it makes everyone love you. It's that simple, brothers and sisters. It really is. I am in no way condemning helping the poor. We're commanded to do that also. Please don't take that from here. What I'm trying to say is, what matters most in their lives? Do we believe that? That it's Jesus Christ? There was a mission.

That slogan was, "Preaching Christ." Well, that got me excited. So I went and spent three days visiting this mission, and they were doing a lot of things. There was obviously a lot of money involved, a lot of amazing things, and it was changing the lives of the people they were working with. But after three days, I just asked him, "I don't want to be rude, but where does Jesus fit in here? Where does Jesus fit in here?

Where's the testimonies of souls giving up all to follow Jesus, including the American dream?" That brother didn't have anything to say. Do we focus on this life? See, in America, we have what we want, and if we don't have what we want, we can get what we want. And so we believe that everybody should be just like us. Everybody should have an opportunity to get what they want and live how they want. But we forget that America is a small part of the world, and in most of the world, it's not the case.

People cannot have what they want, and they are forced to forsake the things that they want and to be content with the things that they can't have. And they're forced to actually look to Jesus Christ when they need help. I don't know how many people I've talked to in the mountains where their only option was Jesus. And that blesses my heart that I see God working there. But in America, forgive me, but we've we've we've we've put Jesus at the end. We'll do everything we can to take care of our own problems.

We'll do everything in our power. It's common sense. It's neglect to pray and ask God to take care of our issues. It's it's it is foolishness to look to Jesus Christ in America. I'm sorry, but it's how I feel. The man that steps out of the ordinary and does something in faith is looked like a fool. But there's people in these poor countries. That's their only option. And they've tried God, and God has proven Himself to them.

They've cried out to God just like I did when I had nothing else to go to, and God heard them. And then when they see Americans come with a whole different agenda and they're saying that they're preaching the same Jesus, they're confused. They're confused. America is a me first culture. America is a me first culture. But it's ironic because God has nothing to do with that. Am I right? If you have a me first attitude, God has nothing with you.

What I mean by that is we take care of all of our needs first, and then if there's something left, we'll give it. We'll take care of our own first, and then if there's anything anything left left, we'll give it. And unfortunately, when we go into poor countries, we bring that same attitude with us, and it's destruction. We go to the poor country and we make sure that everything we need is taken care of.

And I don't know if you know what that looks like, but it doesn't look very good when you're in a poor country trying to win disciples, and you're clearly on a different level. There was a Haitian that told me. I said, "Let me just ask you something. If America could do one thing to help Haiti, just one thing, what would you say it should do?" And all he said was, "Leave. Just leave." I thought about that for a long time. I said. Went back to that man.

I said, "I've been here for a few years now, and I agree with you. But the reason why America is here is because you want America to be here. Because you think America has what you need, and that is money. You believe that America can help you because they have money, whether you say that or not. And so if we want America to go home, then we need to stop seeking money. We need to stop seeking the American dream and a better life.

Because I guarantee you," I told him, "I guarantee you, if Haiti would start seeking God, America would go home because America would not be able to bring you what you want, and you'd start finding poor people from China coming across the waters and giving you what you need. We've already dug a hole for ourselves, Americans. We've dug a hole for ourselves. But can we come out of it for the sake of a nation, for the sake of people all across the world? Or is it too late?

Should we just mingle in with what everybody else wants? Jesus must be the reason why we are going. And I know that most people say that is the reason why they go, but Jesus has to be the answer to their problems, and that is period. We have to have that in our mind, that Jesus Christ is the answer to all of their problems, whether that's poverty or whether that's wickedness, sin, witchcraft. Because we tend to forget that these countries are full of sin.

We look at the flyers and we look at the pictures of the poor people, and our heart goes out to them, and we want to help them, but we forget about the rampant sin that is going through these countries. The problem is a sin problem. And if we don't address the problems in these poor countries as sin problems, we'll do nothing there but create a bigger problem. And we'll stay for a few years and go home defeated. We must believe that Jesus is the answer because they can see that in us.

They can tell whether we believe in Jesus or not. I've used this analogy before. I remember one time in my youth, I was hooked up to a lie detector test, and this this man told me, and maybe you've heard the story before, but this this this officer told me, he said, "We can tell when you're lying. We think you're lying, and we can tell when you're lying. This machine will tell us." And I didn't believe it. And he said, "I'll prove it to you.

I'm going to ask you what month you were born in, and you say yes to every month I say, and I'll tell you which month you were born in." There was a dial on that thing, and it shook when you lied. He said, "Were you born in January?" I said, "Yes." And the thing shook. February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November. I said, "I'm ready to tell the truth." But what if we had hooked each one of us up to that machine? We know that God knows our hearts. We know that, right?

We believe that it's truth. But what if we were hooked up to a machine? And this machine was going to tell you whether you're lying or not on one question. Do you believe in Jesus? Do you believe in Jesus? Because these people can tell whether we believe in Jesus. It's easy to believe in Jesus here in America. We have everything we want. We're blessed. We're blessed. We're blessed. But would God agree with that?

There are other people that go to the mission field for church work, but they get hung up on this thing of, "People are looking at me. I need to be successful. If I go to plant a church in this poor country and I'm here for five years and I don't have any converts, what's going to happen? The mission board is going to pull me home and send someone else." So we need to do something to bring people in. And guess what happens? We fall into the same trap of the churches all over the world.

We want to build a church on a false dream, a false foundation to build us up as missionaries, to build us up as church planters. We planted a church here, there, and there, and everything looks really good. But I suggest you don't go visit, or maybe you'll think something different. When you want people to come into your church, you tend to lower the standard. You lower the standard. I had a missionary actually tell me that without knowing what he was saying. You have to lower the standard.

You have to preach a gospel to them that they will accept. Is that the answer, brothers and sisters? Is that going to lead to what we want? Is this all about numbers and looking good? I hope not. Because when it's about numbers and looking good, what will happen is we'll build a false church. We often start handing things out. Because if you start lowering the standard, plus you start handing out care packages, you're going to have a big church. And guess what?

These people can actually begin to really sound like Christians. Because they want this to continue, this connection to America. But when you go there and you forget about who you are, you forget about your identity as an American, and you identify yourself with Jesus Christ and Him alone. Maybe it doesn't go well for you, but when you have converts, they're there for the right reason.

And if Jesus can come and start with 12 and it can multiply, and He goes and the 12 multiply, and now 2000 years later we have churches all over earth, that can happen. Can it not happen with just one real Christian in a poor country? I hear comments like this, and I've had a lot of heat for saying this. Barry, you're not making Mennonites out of them, are you? I understand the danger there, but I want to tell you something.

If you're living a life because of a culture, it's not going to fulfill your God-given ability, and you're not going to want anyone else to live that culture because the culture you live in is bondage to you. When you're saying, "I'm a Mennonite, that's why I do this." But since you're not a Mennonite, God forbid you ever become one. I don't want you to become one. I want you to be different than me. And we begin to preach a different gospel, and they look at us and they think, "Why are you doing what you're doing?

Is there no biblical principles that you base your life on?" Now, I know things can look different. But when we throw out principles of God or we uphold principles of a culture that we talk down, it does not look good when you're trying to plant a church. We must be real if we want to go plant churches in poor countries. We must be real. It's that simple. It's that simple. Is the priority the souls of those people? When you put that first, they see that. They can see what's most important to you. There's a man.

His house is in shambles. His little shack is in shambles. He has no food. He has nothing. This is how he's lived for decades. And we go up to that man and we try to proclaim to him that he needs this and this for his house, and we can help him with that. And if he would come back to the mission, we'd give him this and we'd give him that. He's on board and he'll say whatever you want him to say. They're sitting there going yes to our Jesus while they're looking at our shoes or looking at our wallets.

But when we approach that man and we don't even really—I know this is hard for some people, but we don't even really see the house. We don't even really see his condition, but we see inside of his soul and we see a man that is going to die and go to hell. You know, for Americans, it's hard to look past this little vapor of a life. It is. We build this thing up as nice as we can get it.

And we forget about eternity and we want everyone else to be just like us, live this life like Joel Stein says, "Be the best life that you can be." We fall into that prosperity gospel without saying it. But when we see a soul and all we can see about is eternity, they feel that. This American just came up to me and all he cares about is my soul. Yeah, yeah, we see your house. We see your needs. But what about your soul? Is that real in our lives?

People often say, "So Barry, you're against humanitarian aid," and I am not. But when you're there for the souls of men, God can then use you. When you're there to build the church, you're—I don't talk about the houses we built. It's not a priority. The people that we fed, it's not a priority to me. So people think, "Well, you've never done any of that." We'll do what God brings before us. And God has done mighty things in bringing money and needs and putting them together, and God is glorified.

But the priority is Jesus Christ, and that is the only way it's going to work. In poor countries, it's easy to become their God, and it's happening all over. We come there and we have what they need. We have what they want. And I find it amazing how quickly this poor person can be completely dependent upon you, completely dependent upon you. They will do anything. You can tell them to do whatever you want them to do, and they will do it. They become your servant. They talk nice. They treat you nice.

They're there for your every need. Because they believe you can give them what they want. It's ironic that that's what Jesus Christ wants for them. He wants to be their God. He wants to be their Father. He says it in Matthew 6:33, "Seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. I'll take care of you. Think not about tomorrow." If we can get these people to not look at us and not focus on us, but focus on the Lord Jesus Christ, wouldn't that be so much better?

We can go home then, and they still have their Father. They still have their God, and that God still loves them and takes care of them no matter what happens to us. And then when God is working in their lives, something happens that can't happen when it's just us working in their lives. They begin to testify of what God can do. They begin to testify of the things that God is doing in their life as poor people.

And yes, I tell them it's not going to be—it may not be a big house or a couple of cars or whatever it may be, but the peace of God that passeth all understanding. Once you get a hold of that, you forget about those things. And I witnessed that in these poor people's lives. When they experience the true saving power of Jesus Christ, when they experience grace in their life, they forget about this and they forget about that. It's amazing.

We go and we try to solve all these problems in these poor countries without God. I remember asking God one time before we had any converts, you know, these people are dirty. They throw their trash everywhere. They're half naked. Will that all change when they get converted? Will something happen inside that changes them? And it did. I marveled at it. We didn't need a program for them anymore. Their focus was in the right direction, and then God took care of it.

Maybe that's over-spiritualizing mission work, but we're trying to do so much on our own. We're trying to plant too many churches without God. We're trying to do too many mission works without God. And when God is there, it's amazing how much easier it is. It's amazing how much faster things spread. So in conclusion, I'll just be honest with you. When I went to America—when I went to Haiti the first time to live, I had a problem. I thought that I was better than them. I want to be honest.

And I don't know if you've ever had that feeling before or you ever come to that conclusion in your own life before, but it's something you can't just just get over. You got to deal with that thing because I tell you, you can never reach someone when you think you're better than them. It won't happen. You're there only for so long, but your life is more important. And it's very easy to think that we're better than them because the whole world thinks we're better than them. They think that we're better than them.

And it won't work. It won't work here in America. When you think because of your culture you're better than someone. This person came from the outside. He came from the drug addicts. He came from the prison cells. He'll never be anything with us, but we're glad he's here and we'll wave and smile at him. Believe it or not, we can feel that. The poor people can feel that, and they may come along. They may join your church because now they have a connection.

They have somebody because their mind is the same as the Israelites was. We want a king. We don't want a lowly Jesus on a donkey. We want someone that can help us, give us food and money. And so when the rich American comes, he can be better than them. That's accepted there. But when they see someone bring themselves down to their level, it works something that few other things can. So we need to come down, and I think we need to do it here before we go anywhere else. We need to practice doing it here.

We're not going to be very successful making disciples in poor countries when we think we're better than them. Let's catch a burden. Let's catch a burden for the Church of Jesus Christ. America has it figured out. It's difficult, but I think the poor countries are open to the gospel, the real gospel. If we're willing to go there with the real gospel, we're not going to take anything out of the Word of God. We're going to preach the Word. We're going to preach what we believe.

We're going to preach on non-resistance, and they're going to connect with that. We're going to preach the truths that America has rejected, and they're going to connect with those truths because they don't have anything else to see. They only see the Bible. And we can build the Church of Jesus Christ in these poor countries, but it starts with you and me, and it starts with a burden for their souls. And we have to remember that Jesus Christ and Him alone is the answer to building His church. God bless you.