A Tale of Two Kingdoms

Well, it's an honor to be able to share in this way. This is new for me, so we may have a shorter sermon than sometimes.

I want to tell you a little bit what I'm hoping to talk about with this message. I want to contrast the strength and permanence of God's kingdom with earthly kingdoms. And I want to talk about a grand opportunity that our church and every other church has to build God's kingdom. And I'm also hoping to address the youth a bit as well in meeting this great need.

So I'll go off on a bunny trail a bit, and I think you'll understand when I get to it. Who can tell me what happened on September 11th, 2001?

Go ahead. Somebody pipe up. The Trade Towers were bombed. So the World Trade Center was, I guess you could call it, bombed. What happened was an American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 were hijacked by Al-Qaeda terrorists and were crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.

3,000 people died in those attacks that day.

And to many people, that day lives in infamy. I think there's maybe even a national holiday related to that. Every year, people remember that day that tragedy happened.

One week after the attack, President George Bush authorized war against those who attacked the U.S., namely Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, which were two groups that were in Afghanistan. So Al-Qaeda was the terrorist group, and the Taliban was kind of a militant group that was there were multiple groups that were kind of fighting for control of Afghanistan. The Taliban was one of them, and they supported Al-Qaeda.

Less than one month after 9/11, the U.S. began dropping bombs in Afghanistan against the Taliban. So I'm not sure if you've heard the term the War on Terror. I think you've probably that's a phrase that was used a lot.

This war was called Operation Enduring Freedom. So kind of keep that phrase in your mind. So we said, "We're going to go bomb these guys, and we're going to call this Operation Enduring Freedom."

To many Americans, fighting in Afghanistan was joining a righteous cause, fighting the bad guys, helping build democracy.

So in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, a lot of people were angry, a lot of people were scared, and this was a response. "We're going to go get rid of the bad guys."

Just three months later, in December 2021, the Taliban had collapsed, essentially was out of power in Afghanistan, and the U.N. facilitated a transitional government in Afghanistan. So it seemed like at this point that victory was just around the corner.

By early 2003, less than two years after 9/11, the U.S. believed the war against the Taliban was essentially over, and they focused efforts on peacekeeping and building Afghanistan again.

Yet despite the early victories against the Taliban, there were problems over the next 18 years. There were bombing attacks that happened. There were suicide bombers. There were car bombers. There were attacks that continued to happen.

The interim government that was put in place by the U.N. faced troubles with corruption. There was some question about whether their voting was corrupt. There was the guys in power kind of favoring people of his family and of his people group. Also, when they tried to when they tried to reach a peace agreement with the Taliban, that continued to fail.

Another issue that happened over the next 18 years, from 2003 to 2021, was when the U.S. tried to do air strikes against the people associated with the Taliban, they also they missed sometimes. They had the wrong information sometimes. And they would basically send a bomb they would basically bomb a place, and sometimes it was there were civilians involved.

And there's all kinds of problems with this. I know somebody who was traveling to the Middle East in 2020, and he said that he talked to a guy with the U.S. Army that had been flying a drone and doing bombs and dropping bombs with it, basically. And this man said he had killed an Al-Qaeda fighter who had a young son. And I don't know how this U.S. Army person felt about it, but as you think of that scenario, this person who was the bad guy had a family. And how do you think that family responded to their father being killed? How do you think that young son what do you think he learned from that?

So fast forwarding to 2020, the Taliban signs a peace agreement with the U.S., but then immediately after carried out a bunch of bombing attacks.

In 2021, President Biden decided to withdraw all U.S. troops by 9/11 in 2021.

Before that even happened, on August 15th, 2021, the Taliban takes over Kabul, and the Afghan government that was put in place by the U.N. collapses.

And then finally, just kind of the last straw, after a Taliban bombing that kills soldiers and people that were trying to evacuate Afghanistan, the U.S. sends one last air strike against a suspect that ends up killing more civilians.

The war in Afghanistan is a perfect example of the failure of the armed forces to bring lasting goodness and change. This was the longest war in U.S. history. It went for 20 years. And after all of that, when they pulled out, the group that they were fighting, the Taliban, took over the country as it was before actually, they took over the country in more significant ways than even before the war started. So you could say it was a complete failure.

And what's kind of ironic is the freedom brought by Operation Enduring Freedom didn't last long enough even for the troops to withdraw.

So it was a complete failure. Just looking at some of the cost of the war, every year during the war, the government the U.S. government spent on average $40 billion every year. And they estimate that there will be so every year during the war, that comes out to around a trillion. They estimate there will be another 2 and a half times that over the next couple decades in paying for veteran expenses and veteran benefits. I'm just going to do some comparison on the board here.

So I'm going to compare something else to this later, but I'm going to do a little bar graph. So this represents

money spent fighting in Afghanistan.

Okay?

I'm going to compare something to that later. So $40 billion

also, in addition to the money that was spent, there were around 775,000 troops that were sent to Afghanistan. 20,000 of those were wounded, and 2,500 of them died. Her cause had completely failed, completely failed.

I was talking with an Afghan at a restaurant one time, and he fled the country when the Taliban took over in 2021. And he basically said, "Everything we worked for was lost." He left everything behind. He had a home. He had cars. He had a family. He left everything behind, and everything was lost.

So my question is, why did it fail? Why didn't the stability last? Why didn't the freedom endure? Does anybody have any thoughts?

They weren't able to reach the root of the issue. Okay. They weren't able to reach the root of the issue. And I think that would you know, the example of the guy that flew the drone that did the bombing, the people that are left behind are only shown violence. They're not shown a better way.

The issue the root issue isn't addressed. And what I would say is, Afghanistan what Afghanistan really needed was a change of heart.

So in Afghanistan, there are around 44 million people in 58 people groups. All of those people groups would be considered unreached. So the definition of unreached is basically less than 2% of the people group is Christian. So if there's less than 2%, 2 out of every 100, it's more or less impossible for those 2 people out of 100 to reach their people group.

They're basically that people group does not have much exposure to Christianity. So all of the people groups all of the 58 people groups in Afghanistan would be considered unreached.

There's an estimate that in the country, there are around 2,000 to 3,000 Christians. So 2,000 to 3,000 out of 44 million comes out to around 0.007% of the population. So to help you visualize this, think of the town of Shippensburg has around I think around 6,000 people. And that would be like there would be one Christian every other town the size of Shippensburg. So our town isn't big enough to even have one Christian if we had the same ratio as Afghanistan does.

Can you imagine the chances of meeting somebody meeting a Christian and hearing the Gospel if the only Christians around were one in every other town the size of ours?

So these people did not have Christians to show Christ to them. They only knew of U.S. Christians, people that they associated with Christianity, dropping bombs on them.

So my question is, what if we had invested the effort and cost in spreading the Gospel instead? I want to do a little comparison of the money that the U.S. spent on fighting the war in Afghanistan with the money that is invested by Christians in spreading the Gospel to unreached people groups.

So I want to have another somebody else guess something for me. So can anybody try to guess the amount of money in dollars given by Christians worldwide for reaching the unreached? So specifically, money given, money given to missions, and money given to missions that are focusing on unreached people groups. Does anybody have any guess?

I would say maybe not more than a million altogether. Okay? If it's that much. Okay. That's close. Yeah. Yeah. So this is an estimate, of course, because it's hard to get exact numbers. But they estimate that $1.3 billion is given to missions focusing on unreached people groups.

So what's interesting is how small of a fraction this is of what Christians around the world earn. So they estimate that Christians around the world earn around $70 trillion a year. Seems like a lot of money. They tithe about $1.3 trillion of that. So that's only a few percent, not 10%, only a few percent of what they tithe. Of the $1.3 trillion, the $1,300 billion, $78 billion goes to missions. It's a small fraction of what they tithe goes to missions, and $1.3 billion goes to unreached goes to missions focusing on unreached people groups. So a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what Christians earn goes to reaching the unreached people groups.

Now, this is where I want to do a comparison. So if this is what the U.S. spent fighting a little country in Asia every year, this is what Christians

so this would be so this is what the U.S. spent fighting the war in Afghanistan every year. This is how much Christians worldwide give toward missions that reach unreached people groups.

What's crazy is, this is given to this is missions worldwide. Unreached people groups worldwide is a very large group of people. All of this money was spent on a tiny country that's a very small fraction of the unreached people group. So what I think is interesting is how much the U.S. invested in this war effort that was completely ineffective and how little is given to how little is given by Christians worldwide to missions for the unreached people groups.

The U.S. spent 30 times as much a year on one tiny country in Asia as Christians worldwide give to reach all of these people groups in a very large area of the world.

You know, I think there's a couple things that stand out to me here. One is, there's a verse about, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be." And I think that what we see in the giving of the Church at large is that people are investing locally but not investing where the greatest need is.

Imagine the potential if every Christian in the world that was part of that $70 trillion number that I put out really gave what they everything they could. And then imagine if a larger percentage of that was given towards reaching people in the 10:40 window, which is an area that includes a large swath of Asia and part of Africa that has most of the world's unreached people groups. Imagine if a larger portion of that $70 trillion went to that area of great need.

I think that this shows that the Church at large is not investing in reaching people in this area nearly enough. There's a massive need and relatively little being invested in it. I want to read some verses in Romans 10, verse 13. "For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!"

According to the Joshua Project, which is an organization that records what people groups have been reached and how many Christians there are, Afghanistan could use 900 missionaries just to get started, just to pioneer the Gospel.

I want to point our attention to another time in history when there was an incredible need for the Gospel, but the opportunity was missed.

Japan, at the turn of the 20th century at that time, there were 600 about 600 missionaries there in 1897. Every mission agency was asking for more. So there was a lot of need. There was a lot of things happening. Most of the country at that time had not heard of Christ.

In 1901, the future president of the YMCA, John Mott said that America can send 10,000 missionaries to Japan now, where in 40 years, they'll have to send 100,000 soldiers. So this was something that was said in 1901. And interestingly enough, it was kind of a in a way, it was like a prophecy of what actually happened because then there was World War II that happened.

But at that time, the American Church did not believe the urgent need for missionaries, and they neglected the opportunity.

At that time, as I understand it I feel silly talking about Japan when I have somebody that's from Japan that actually knows this much better, probably, but I'll say what I know. At that time in history, Japan was in a period of change.

There were a lot of old traditions that were maybe being left behind. There was a lot of change happening. And you could say it was ripe for the Gospel. But ultimately, most of the country turned to Shinto I think that's how you say it and worshiping the emperor and became very intensely nationalistic.

And one could say it was a sense of national pride prompted Japan to enter World War II and fight until much of the country was destroyed.

And as it turned out, America did send soldiers instead of missionaries. There were 2 million American soldiers fighting Japan in World War II, and 109,000 of them died.

There's a man named I think I'm saying this right. Mitsuo Fuchida? Is that how you say it? Yes.

I don't know. You guys don't know the name, but I'll attempt to say it. So this man led the attack. He was a pilot, and he led the bombing attack at Pearl Harbor.

And he was a man who later became a Christian. And he said, "I would give anything to retract my actions of 29 years ago at Pearl Harbor, but it is impossible. Instead, I now work at striking the death blow to the basic hatred which infests the human heart and causes such tragedies.

And that hatred cannot be uprooted without assistance from Jesus Christ."

That quote just really stuck with me, that the contrast of Jesus' kingdom and the goodness that comes from it with the way of the world, of fighting, of getting our will by force, and of the root of the issue being the basic hatred, not the root of the issue being the basic hatred and that being the reason for these wars that happen.

I want to read 2 Corinthians 10, a couple verses there, verse 4. "For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ."

So looking at these two examples of Japan and Afghanistan, they show the these two examples show the failure of worldly kingdoms to bring peace, to bring goodness. But they also show a missed opportunity of the Church to really invest where there are needs and really make a difference.

There are still a lot of significant needs in the world at large. There's a region called the 10:40 window. I'm not sure if you've heard that term before. Who's heard the term before 10:40 window? Okay. Decent number of people. So it is basically it is a region, like I said, in mostly Asia, but it's a region where most of the people groups are considered unreached.

So that would be less than 2% of the group is Christian.

These regions are not always safe or receptive to the Gospel, but the needs are great.

Most of the cross-cultural mission work done by the Church at large is in areas with plenty of Christians, for example, Kenya. So Kenya would be probably Kenya would be considered more of a Christian nation than our nation, that's for sure.

And there are needs there, of course, but it is it would be considered reached, right? But there's still a lot of mission work going there.

Another, I guess, another example, the Church where I grew up had clinics and that sort of thing in Central America, which is I think it was good. I think it was a good thing that they were doing. But that region of the world would be would have a lot of Christian influence. People that want to follow God, in many cases, have exposure to Christians they know they're not without knowledge, right?

But there are regions of the world where that is not the case, even now.

I think we live in a time of incredible opportunity.

I'm going to read a passage in John 4, just a couple verses here.

And this was where Jesus was at the Jesus was at in Samaria and was talking to the woman at the well. Actually, this was after when he was talking to his disciples. And he said, "My meet is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work." Verse 34. "Say ye not, 'There are yet four months, and then come with harvest.' Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest.

And he that reapeth receiveth wages and gathereth fruit unto life eternal, that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together."

So I think there really is a time of opportunity now. There's a lot of there's a lot of people that do not have exposure to Christians, that do not have that do not have people to teach them about God.

And I think that we're called to do our I think that we're called to try to make a difference in this world. I want to especially highlight the chance that young people have to make a difference. You have a short time period while you're an adult, but before you have a lot of responsibility.

And I guess my encouragement to you is you'll find much more satisfaction in intentionally doing good for others than in passively living for short-term fun. Ecclesiastes 11:9 says, "Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. Remove vexation from your heart and put away pain from your body, for youth and the dawn of life are vanity. Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near, of which you will say, 'I have no pleasure in them.'" There's another thing there's another thing that I want to bring out.

Sometimes people have the idea that finding excitement in life is looking for boundaries to cross. And I want to tell you that the most exciting life is following God wherever He leads you. There's a lot of there's a world of needs out there that you can help. You can make a difference in.

And that's not always in places that are safe. Sometimes it involves some risk and some danger.

There's a passage from Jeremiah that also kind of stood out to me. And thinking of making a difference as a young person, Jeremiah apparently was a young prophet. "Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 'Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And before you were born, I consecrated you. I appointed you a prophet to the nations.' Then I said, 'Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.' But the Lord said to me, 'Do not say, 'I am only a youth.' For to all whom I send you, you shall go. And whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you,' declares the Lord."

As a young person, it can feel like you have all of your life ahead of you, but it goes by pretty quickly. So my encouragement for you is if you want to do something with your life, the time for that is now.

And if you can't find time as a single person to serve, it will be much harder to find time as a married person with a family and all the responsibilities that come with that.

Kind of looking ahead, I guess, a little bit in serving, sometimes there's a time of preparation for serving. And my encouragement would be to treat kind of your family and community as a proving grounds and as a way to gear up for what you're hoping to do. And look at if you're ever looking at being involved in cross-cultural ministry, look at engaging with your family and relating to your family as training for working with a team, right? So learning to work well with other people is training for working well with other people in a hard situation.

And if you aren't sharing your faith with the people that you meet here, how will you do it in Asia, right? So think of it as training. And I would like to encourage some of the younger people as well that one really good way to learn to share your faith is through teaching, teaching others. And teaching at, like, the children's ministry, for example, is a good way to learn to share your faith.

And then there are a lot of short-term missions opportunities that are a good way to get awareness of what the needs are in the world. And it's a great way to start. So then kind of to everyone at large, there's a lot of needs out there.

Just I'm just going to name a few that I'm aware of since I do some stuff with Kingdom Channels. In Iraq, there's roles for teaching English and then also counseling ladies who were abducted by ISIS. And they're looking for two couples.

They're looking for four single people, both guys and girls. So there's a lot of needs there. In Ukraine, there's a group that's clearing landmines in fields so that farmers can plant crops. And they're looking for another couple there. In Central Asia, they're looking to pioneer a work in Tajikistan.

And they need two couples and four single people as well. So there's a lot of a lot of opportunities out there. When we think of sharing the Gospel in an area that has been more saturated with the Gospel, we think of convincing people that they that they should be interested in what we have to offer. When you are at an area where people do not know the Gospel, there's such a greater opportunity.

So in closing, back to kind of where we started, I'd like to get some perspective from the vision that Daniel had that Daniel interpreted for King Nebuchadnezzar and kind of take that back to the topic of the kingdom.

This is in Daniel chapter 2, and then I'm going to read verses 36 through 44. "You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. The head of this image was of fine gold; its chest and arms of silver; its middle and thighs of bronze; its legs of iron; its feet of partly of iron and partly of clay.

As you looked, as you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay and broke them to pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold altogether were broken into pieces and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors, and the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth."

This was a dream. Now we will tell to the king its interpretation. "You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory, and into whose hand he has given, wherever they dwell, the children of man, the beasts of the field, the birds of heaven, making you rule over them all, you are the head of gold. Another kingdom inferior to you shall arise after you, and yet a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. And there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things. And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these.

And as you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with soft clay.

And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle.

As you saw the iron mixed with the soft clay, so they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay. And in the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break into pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever."

And I think we look at that time in history as the there were the there was a Babylonian Empire, and eventually there was a Roman Empire. And then with Jesus came the kingdom of God. And that has been in existence from that time until now.

Every nation, including our own, including the United States, will one day fail. Those who give their lives to a nation will ultimately waste their life.

But God gives us the opportunity for us to work with Him, to build His kingdom that will never be destroyed.

So that's what I have to share. Is there any thoughts or any discussion before we close?