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Matthew 28:19-20
Acts 16:9-10
“Expect great things from God;
Attempt great things for God”
William Carey is known as the Father of modern Christian missions. He
was a shoemaker in England. Early in his life, Carey began to read the journals of
sailors who had travelled around the world. The more he read and studied, the
more he was convinced that all the nations and people of the world needed Christ.
He prayed for God’s direction in his life. One day, Carey heard the call from God
in these words, "If it is the duty of all people to believe the Gospel, then it is the
duty of those who receive salvation and are entrusted with the Gospel to do
everything possible to make Jesus known among all nations." And Carey cried out
to God, just as the prophet Isaiah did many centuries before him, "Here am I Lord;
send me!"
In his day, not many of his fellow ministers were interested in missionary
work; but William Carey was convinced and convicted that all Christians had a
responsibility to spread the Gospel and make Jesus known to the whole world.
Carey remained persistent because you know, when the Spirit of God starts a fire
within you, no one can quench it. When Jesus touches your life, you want to tell
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everyone about it and Carey continued to convince other Christians of his time that
they had an obligation and a duty to God to take the Gospel into the whole world.
Before going to India, Carey preached a sermon to his fellow Baptists in which he
encouraged them to organize the Baptist Missionary Society. In that sermon, he
repeated a line that became his most famous quote today. He told them, “Expect
great things from God; attempt great things for God.” The Holy Spirit moved the
listeners and they organized the Baptist Missionary Society.
Carey and his family moved to India where he spent over 40 years there
translating the Bible into the local languages of the people. When he died at the
age of 73, he had seen the Scriptures translated and printed into forty languages of
India; he had also been a college professor, and had founded a college; he had seen
India open its doors to missionaries. William Carey attempted great things for God
and he expected great things from God
(http://www.wholesomewords.org/missions/bcarey1.html). He was able to do that
because one day he read in Matthew 28: 19-20 where Jesus gave to the apostles
and to the entire church a mandate we now call “The Great Commission.”
The Great Commission reads, “Go therefore into the whole world and make
disciples of all nations; baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And I will
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be with you always, to the end of the age.” Jesus did not say, “Please consider
going into the entire world to make disciples.” He did not say, “If you don’t mind,
I would like you to go into the entire world.” He said, “Go.” This makes it a
requirement, an obligation, a duty, an expectation and a responsibility of each and
every Christian. When we accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we surrendered
ourselves and everything we have to him. When we sing the hymn, “I surrender
All,” we must sing those words with our lips, we must believe them in our hearts,
and we must practice them in our lives. By accepting Christ, we are no longer our
own and we no longer live for ourselves. I love the quote from the 16th century
Reformer, Martin Luther who said, in effect, “I am a totally free person, subject to
no one. But because I belong to Christ, I serve all people.” That is the power of
the Great Commission.
When the apostles received the Great Commission, they waited for the Holy
Spirit to come upon them. Before we undertake any action for God, we need the
power of the Holy Spirit. On the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came, the
Church experienced a new life; the disciples and the whole Church was born again.
The Spirit empowered them and they began to preach the Gospel with boldness.
Peter ended up in Rome where history tells us he was crucified. Thomas took his
missionary work to India. Phillip took the Gospel to what is now Turkey and he
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was killed there. Even the Gospel writer Mark went to Egypt where he planted the
Gospel (http://www.ichthus.info/Disciples/intro.html).
But the most famous missionary in the early Church was Paul, the Apostle.
Paul made three missionaries journeys and was mainly responsible for spreading
the Gospel among the Gentiles. On one of his missionary journeys, Paul had a
vision in which he saw a man from another city who said to him, “Come over to
Macedonia and help us.” You see, Church, a dream takes place when we are
asleep, but a vision takes place when we are wide awake. This was God’s way of
telling Paul he was not dreaming and the message was serious. There were people
in the Greek city of Macedonia who needed to hear the Gospel. Paul could have
said, “No. I’m too busy” or “I don’t have the time.” Instead, Paul knew this was a
part of God’s plan to make the Gospel known to the whole world. He had to go.
From Paul’s generation to our own, different Christian believers who heard
the Gospel also became convinced that the message of salvation should be given to
the whole world. As one preacher explained it, “”Evangelism is one beggar telling
another beggar where to find bread.” In other words, we all were lost in the
wilderness, and we are hungry for peace, love and for salvation. When we find
Jesus and we receive salvation, we have an obligation to tell others so that they
will come to Christ.
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One person who wanted to attempt great things for God and expect great
things from God was Reverend Melville Cox. Cox was born to a dedicated
Christian family that was very active in the Methodist Episcopal Conference of
Maine, in New England. When he was a young man, Melville Cox was called to
the Ministry of Christ. When Cox accepted the call of God for his life, he became
very involved in the ministries of the Methodist Church. Throughout his ministry,
Cox heard of how the American Colonization Society had sent two men to West
Africa to buy land so that those slaves who were free could return to Africa. The
two men sent to West Africa bought land where Africans in the United States were
encouraged to return to Africa. The land they bought became known as Liberia,
meaning the “Land of Liberty.”
The Methodist Episcopal Church as it was called at the time, sent out
invitations for missionaries to Africa. They knew the people of Liberia and Africa
were saying to them, as Paul heard in his vision, “Come over to Africa and help
us.” That call went on for years until 1830 when the Spirit of God inspired
Melville Cox to answer the call. Cox himself was sick but he didn’t let sickness
get in the way of his dedication to Christ. Three years later, in 1833, Melville Cox
was ready to go as the first Methodist missionary to Liberia and to Africa. His
sickness continued to battle him but he was determined to answer God’s call for
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missionaries. Before going, a friend asked him what his last words would be since
it was possible he would not live too long. Cox looked at his friend and answered,
“Though a thousand fall, let not Africa be given up.”
The Methodist Church did not give up on Africa. Cox arrived in Liberia in
March 1833 and lived for less than six months before he died in July of the same
year. But my friends, Melville Cox showed us that it is not how long we live but
how well we live; it is not the quantity of our years but the quality of our lives.
Cox was 33 years old when he died; this was how old Jesus was when he died. In
his short life, Cox planted the seeds of the Gospel in Liberia and extended
throughout Africa. Through the ministries of Melville Cox, so many more
sacrificed their lives in Africa for the Gospel of Jesus Christ; today, the Light of
Christianity continues to shine. The faithful service of missionaries to Liberia
includes, but not limited to Calvin Holton, Sophrinia Harrington, Francis Burns,
Rufus Spaulding, Samuel and Phebe Wright, John Seys, Ann Wilkins, Bishop Levi
Scott, Charles Pittman, and Bishop William Taylor.
Bishop Taylor expanded the Methodist mission of Christ throughout Liberia
and in Africa. From Liberia, Bishop Taylor took the light of the Gospel to other
parts of Africa. It is because of his ministry that the United Methodist Church is in
Angola, South Africa, the Congo, India, and Australia. Missionaries like Melville
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Cox, Bishop Taylor and many others felt the Spirit of God upon them and believed
they had an opportunity to become faithful witnesses to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
They read Matthew 16:24 where Jesus said to his disciples, "Whoever wants to be
my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” They
knew it was not about them. It was about Christ. They could not run from their
calling as Moses tried to do in Exodus chapter 3, and God pursued him until he
said yes. They could not make excuses as Jeremiah did when he said he was too
young until God convinced him his age didn’t matter. The deep love they felt from
God inspired them to become faithful servants of Christ and His Church.
Through the work of the missionaries to Africa, schools have been built to
educate many young people. In Liberia, through the work of Operation Classroom
and the Liberia Conference, schools have been built throughout the country, even
in villages where there no schools before. The church schools are better equipped
and provide higher quality of education that includes the teaching about the Bible.
When Liberian refugees were living in Ghana and had no hope of a future, it was
the United Methodist Church that offered hope when we built a vocational school
to provide skills training for young refugees.
The United Methodist Church has also constructed hospitals and clinics to
care for the sick. This is in line with the ministry of Jesus who healed the sick and
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said to the faithful believers in Matthew 25, “When I was sick, you took care of
me.” When there are natural and human disasters, the Church works through
UMCOR to provide first aid not only to those in Africa but to disaster relief here in
America and around the world.
It is because of the great missionary efforts that reach to my village where I
heard the Gospel and accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. When I
accepted Jesus, the missionaries welcomed me as a part of the family of God, the
Body of Christ. They told me I now belonged to a family that reached around the
world. They said the family of Christ I was a part of was made of people who
were of many colors. They were black, white, red, and would speak many
different languages. But the one language we would all speak, is the language of
God’s love in Jesus. It would be the language of the Gospel that declares in John
3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, so that
whosoever believe in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” My new
family included Christian believers in Europe, in Asia, in South America, Australia
and in the United States. They said that one day I will be able to meet the
members of my Christian family.
In 2007, I was blessed to come to the United States for the first time where I
met other members of my Christian family of the Illinois Great Rivers Conference
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of the United Methodist Church. It is a blessing to meet more members of my
Christian family here in Brookville, Pennsylvania. Thank you for the warm
welcome that my family and I have received. As Jesus said in Mark 9:37,
Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and
whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me."
As I close, let me say that Christian mission is like a relay race. In a relay
race, each runner passes the baton to the next runner and so on. The first
generation of Christians such as Peter and Paul passed the baton to the next
generation and so on. William Carey received it and passed it on to people like
Melville Cox. Cox passed it on to those who followed him like Bishop William
Taylor. Taylor passed it on to the next generation. Now, it is our turn to keep the
Gospel pure and true as we prepare to pass it on to our children and the next
generation. The hymn writer, Mary Thomas wrote that one night, as she sat with
one of her children who was sick, she thought about missions and that it would be
children like her own, who would take the Gospel to the world. So the wrote the
missionary hymn, “O Zion Haste” with the opening verse, “O Zion, haste, thy
mission high fulfilling, To tell to all the world that God is light, That He who made
all nations is not willing, One soul should perish, lost in shades of night.” She then
closed with the words, “Give of thine own to bear the message glorious; give of
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thy wealth to speed them on their way; pour out thy soul for them in prayer
victorious; O Zion, haste to bring the brighter day.”
May the Holy Spirit give us the conviction that moved Paul to act for Jesus,
that guided William Carey to love the people of India, that inspired Melville Cox
to accept the people of Africa as his brothers and sisters, that empowered William
Taylor to see everyone he met as children of God. May the Spirit make us truly a
Church family as we begin our ministry together because of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ. May God bless us all and prosper the works of our hands as we expect
great things from God and attempt great things for God.” Amen.
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