[0:00] Good morning. It is good to be here and to be able to speak to you again. I must confess that I am very surprised at how full this church is.
[0:18] ! And I believe that when I first was saved in 1965, I was 19 years old at the time.
[0:30] And I talked to the man who led me to the Lord, who also was the pastor of that church. And a few days after I was saved, he told me, he said, I told him that God was calling me to ministry.
[0:50] And I didn't know what that meant, but I had a very strong sense that God was speaking to me. And he said to me, he said, you need to go to Bible school and get some training.
[1:03] And so, anyway, being a Paraguayan Mennonite and not ever having enjoyed school, I always thought that whoever invented school had a sick sense of humor.
[1:19] And I almost have that conviction even today. I don't enjoy studying. I have a couple of degrees.
[1:29] But one of my sons one time said to me, Dad, how many years did you spend in school? And I discovered that I had gotten most of my education after 21.
[1:45] After I was saved, I went to Bible school and that was where my learning began. And here I see an audience.
[1:57] And I was born in Paraguay, South America. And I know that some of you were born in Mexico, in Bolivia, and maybe even in Paraguay.
[2:10] And some of you might say, well, all I will ever be able to do is operate machinery, drive truck, or whatever. And I could barely read and write when I started Bible school.
[2:28] So I figured that if I can learn, then you can too. By the way, we used to serve in La Crete, Alberta, with Bert Taller.
[2:43] And also spent a fair bit of time with Wayne and Sadie. And we had known Wayne and Sadie many years before we discovered that one of our closest friends, Peter and Mary Thiessen, were Wayne's uncle and aunt.
[3:03] And so we were, Wayne and Sadie and us were friends already, and we discovered that they became friends. And Peter and Mary Thiessen, his uncle and aunt, they started Bible school the same year that my wife and I started missionary training.
[3:24] And they were part of the church where I was the associate pastor. And I say all of these things just to encourage some of you who have a sense that God is calling you, but how can God use you?
[3:37] There's a Bible verse that says, faithful is he who calls you, who also will do it.
[3:48] And I never realized the day when I bowed my knees to Jesus Christ to respond to his call, not to ministry, but to salvation.
[4:05] And I never realized what God actually was capable of doing in the life of somebody like me. And I have the privilege.
[4:44] And I have the doctorate degree. He said many people are educated beyond their intelligence. And they're of no use to God in his work.
[4:56] Because they have an education. And what God is looking is for men and women who are saying, Lord, here's my life. Do with it what you will.
[5:07] Use me in a manner that you will. Get me to do the work that you call me to. Do with it what you call me to do. And God Almighty is able to do much beyond anything that you and I can imagine or even think that we can do.
[5:27] All it takes is for us to daily choose to walk in humility before him. And God will do a mighty work in you.
[5:38] Paul said to the Philippians, being confident of this very thing, that he who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Christ. I would like to say something else as well.
[5:51] We have spent the last couple of days with Wayne and Sadie. And they are very close friends with whom we share deep things that we don't share with many people.
[6:06] And we've enjoyed good fellowship. I appreciate the fact that Pastor Henry, and I feel like he's becoming a friend.
[6:18] And we just want to encourage you as a church. Be men and women who walk by faith. I remember coming to this church back when it was in Claremont.
[6:35] And there were about 20 or 25 adults in that church. And today I look at this audience and I've been noticing one of the elders. He's walking around just checking where is there more space in case people come.
[6:49] And that's the way it should be. And it's a church that has people being added to the church, not just because they're coming from somewhere else, but because they're getting saved and are becoming a part of this church.
[7:07] I appreciate the training program that you're running, both for leadership training as well as for other aspects of training, your Bible studies and so on.
[7:21] It's a busy church. And rather than kind of just tagging along and being a weight to pull, I would like to encourage you to step out by faith.
[7:35] And that applies to every aspect of the ministry of the church. Step out by faith in giving. Step out by faith in applying yourselves to learning.
[7:50] Every Christian should be a lifelong learner. And I am still at a stage where I choose to be a learner.
[8:00] And I want to encourage you to become lifelong learners if you haven't become that as yet. Because you see, you never know what God wants to do with your life.
[8:15] And because God is God, he doesn't have to sit down with us and say, Peter, I'd like to offer you this kind of a ministry. What he does is he takes us and he gives us spiritual gifts.
[8:32] And he takes us with a specific intention where we would become fruitful members of his service. And I want to encourage you to that end.
[8:43] I'd like you to turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 1. And I have to confess that my gifting is not expository preaching.
[8:58] I have taken various courses to help me in that. But I don't have the gift of that.
[9:08] What God has gifted me with, and I have been in the Lord's service in pastoral ministry and in missionary ministry with New Tribes Mission, and now it's called Ethnos.
[9:23] And I have been serving the Lord both in pastoral work and with the mission for a number of years before our leadership in the mission pulled me aside and said, Peter, we believe that God has gifted you in leadership.
[9:42] I had the privilege of teaching missionary candidates for four years, together with several other men, and then God called us into representation work.
[9:55] And we've been doing that since 1982 full time. And Linda went to 24 years of teacher interviews as our children were growing up.
[10:09] We have four children, and they were spaced. And so for 24 years, she sometimes refers to it, I was a single mom.
[10:19] I was a single mom because God called me to an itinerant to a traveling ministry, and I spent much time away from home.
[10:30] And so the Lord has been good to me. But here in the last number of years, the Lord has brought us back into pastoral work.
[10:41] He called us out of pastoral work into missions, and now we are back in pastoral work. I serve as an interim or transitional pastor in a church just west of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
[10:56] I preach twice a month, and I do visitation every week that we're home. And I know that God has raised up the church.
[11:10] And much of that teaching that is required for a church to become what God intends it to be is through the teaching and training of the local church.
[11:26] Paul wrote to the Romans. He had never preached in Rome. So the church was not started by Paul. It was started by others. And it probably was as a result of people who were dispersed at the stoning of Stephen in Jerusalem.
[11:44] And it says all the Jews, the Christians, they went back home. And wherever they went, they gossiped the gospel. They preached the gospel.
[11:55] Have you heard? And the minute that you hear that word, let me, if you disagree with me, raise your hand. But when somebody comes to you and says, have you heard?
[12:08] What do you do? You go like this, right? You want to hear. And that's how they shared the gospel. That's how the Christians shared the gospel at Antioch.
[12:20] And out of that was born the church. Out of that, Paul eventually became a fellow teacher with Barnabas. And eventually God called him out of the Antioch church to become missionaries to the world at large.
[12:40] And Paul talks in Romans chapter 1 of the fact that your faith, the faith of the Roman church, was known throughout the world.
[12:54] And there we see one of those wonderful things that God does. He uses all kinds of means to spread the gospel.
[13:05] And we know that later on in his life when Paul was in prison under the Roman rule. And he was in prison and he would be chained to a guard every day.
[13:22] How many of you would be a fervent witness when you were in chains as a result of your witness to Jesus Christ?
[13:32] Paul took those opportunities. And today the Roman soldier that was chained to him and Paul would preach to him and share the gospel with him and lead him to personal faith in Jesus Christ.
[13:48] And during that time, having a captive audience who couldn't walk away, he would teach them. And the next day that soldier might be on the way to the uttermost part of the Roman Empire.
[14:10] Isn't God great? Isn't God ingenious? Isn't God a God who is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance, come to personal faith?
[14:27] And back in those days, God used the Roman Empire to spread the gospel throughout the world. The then known world.
[14:40] And so I give you that kind of background and now I want to delve into a few verses in Romans chapter 1. In Romans chapter 1 verse 16 he says this.
[14:52] For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes.
[15:06] For the Jew first and also for the Greek. The gospel. Let's take a moment to look at how Paul defines the gospel in 1 Corinthians chapter 15.
[15:23] I think it's important. I have used these verses before in this church. But I think it bears repeating. When you have truth, it bears repeating.
[15:36] The Bible says teach faithful men who will teach others also. Do they learn that just simply by hearing at once? Often for me, it goes this way, right through from ear to ear.
[15:51] When I went to have my hearing checked, I said to the lady who did the checking, I said, What do you see? And she said, I can look right through.
[16:03] And sometimes it seems that when I hear something, it goes right through. But here the Apostle Paul has this to say.
[16:15] Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preach to you, which also you received, and in which you stand.
[16:30] I declare to you the gospel. What's the gospel? Let's read what he says the gospel is. By which also you are saved, if you hold fast, that word which I preach to you, unless you believed in vain.
[16:50] Another way of putting that would be, unless you do not believe the message. In Romans chapter 10, Paul says, so then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
[17:06] So apart from the hearing of the word of God, either in written form or in spoken form, we cannot believe.
[17:19] That's what he says. It is through the hearing. And if you believe. If you truly believe. For I delivered to you, first of all, that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins, according to my testimony.
[17:38] Right? He says no. He says, according to the scriptures. And God has revealed himself throughout scripture.
[17:54] Through the scripture. And that is how we know who he is. That's what we know about his character. That's what we know concerning his will for our lives.
[18:06] It is through the spoken and the written word of God that we know. And that he was buried. And burial is a very final thing.
[18:19] When we die and we are buried, I'm praying for the rapture. I don't like the idea of being put six foot under.
[18:31] Even though that's just my physical body. I am looking for the rapture. And the apostle Paul talks about that as well.
[18:43] But in the meanwhile, when he was talking to the Thessalonians, they had just sold everything. And went and sat on a hill waiting for the rapture. And Paul said, don't do that.
[18:56] While you wait, keep busy. Keep doing. And so those are some of the things. And that he was buried.
[19:07] And that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. So the message of the resurrection was not original with Paul.
[19:20] It was something that he took from scripture. And then he goes on and he says, In that he was seen by Cephas or by Peter and by the twelve.
[19:31] They were personal witnesses. As they saw him after his resurrection. And so as we think about those things, I want to encourage you.
[19:46] Keep your eyes on the Lord. Keep your eyes on the second coming of Jesus Christ.
[19:57] And that should motivate us to preach the gospel till the ends of the earth. I want to digress here a little bit, Pastor Wayne.
[20:09] I may not get through all of this. I want to talk about some of the things that God is doing these days throughout the world.
[20:24] Through the ministry of Ethnos Canada, which used to be New Tribes Mission, called New Tribes Mission. There are some five language groups.
[20:39] People who have no access to the gospel in their own language. And many of them only speak one language. Or at least one language that has the gospel.
[20:53] So there are five groups each year that are hearing the gospel for the very first time. Where churches are born.
[21:04] And the moment you have two or three believers within a language setting, you have the birth of the church. There are five or six Bible translations.
[21:20] That's the New Testament and many verses in the Old Testament. There are five or six Bibles or New Testaments that are dedicated.
[21:33] That are tribal languages. They're not German. They're not English. They are languages of the tribal people.
[21:46] And they're hearing that. And that is something that God is doing these days. That is happening. Even though there are some countries where we are forced out of the tribe and can no longer go and minister there in person.
[22:03] Some of our missionaries are beginning to use these fixed tuned radios. And they deliver them to the tribal people.
[22:15] And through radio stations. They are hearing Bible teaching. A friend of ours, Merle Dick. He lives in Salmon Arm now.
[22:27] He is a couple of years younger and about as decrepit as I am. And last year, he sent 60 Bible programs where he was teaching the Bible beginning in Genesis chapter 1, teaching through.
[22:45] He said, I need 80 some podcasts to teach all the way through the New Testament. So pray for me that God will give me strength and courage to continue to produce these podcasts.
[23:02] And Merle has seen two of his brothers pass away here in the last couple of years. Another one has stage 4 cancer.
[23:12] He'll be dying soon. His mother, who is 90 plus, she has witnessed the death of her husband, who was greatly used by God in pastoral ministry and later on with our mission.
[23:30] And so those are some of the things that are difficult.
[23:44] Officially, this September, I'm going to retire from New Tribes Mission or from Ethnos. That doesn't mean that I'm retiring from ministry.
[23:55] We spent last weekend up in the Buick Creek area. I spoke at a camp out, church camp out. And I told the people there, they are close friends.
[24:08] And I told the people there, I said, this may be my last visit here. I have health challenges, as you know.
[24:21] Or as you can see, I walk very carefully, walk carefully up the steps. Pastor Wayne, he agreed to help me down as I come down because I'm not sure that I can make the steps.
[24:36] Just because of knee problems and kidney problems and so on. But anyway, I will preach the gospel as long as God gives me grace.
[24:47] There are many, many people who cannot speak for themselves to God because they don't know him.
[25:00] They don't know about him. And God is looking for men and women who will step out by faith. Humanly impossible because of background and various things like that.
[25:15] But it's amazing how many people God has used that come from very similar background that I come from. And they've had the privilege of planting churches in the areas where the gospel had never, ever gone before.
[25:34] And some of those are there because of the ministry that God led us into. So anyway, let's go back to Romans chapter 1.
[25:46] He says, Did you know that that verse was used by God to bring us Mennonites?
[26:07] You and I enjoy the benefit of that statement today. Because Martin Luther was saved as a result of reading, The just shall live by faith.
[26:23] And Mennonites later on was saved through Luther's writings. And he took the gospel further than Martin Luther did in terms of theology, development, and so forth.
[26:39] And then in verse 18 he says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of God.
[26:50] One tribal group, when they heard for the very first time the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, The tribal men, they fearfully looked around.
[27:04] And they said, When will God judge us with fire? Because we are just like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. They did not yet fully understand the grace of God.
[27:21] And as they listened and heard, And when they heard the gospel, The death, the burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, When they heard that story, Many of them spoke up right during that teaching session.
[27:38] And they responded. And they said, I believe, I believe, I understand, I believe. Why? Because they had heard the story of God's revelation of who God was.
[27:53] They understood the fact that God in the days of Noah and in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah Did not tolerate much of what they were practicing as a people group.
[28:03] And when they understood the fact that Jesus came into this world and died, And they began to realize that he died for them personally.
[28:18] They believed. Today, among that people group, there's a thriving church that produces missionaries. By the way, Wayne, the missionary did the same thing that you do here, That you and Henry do here.
[28:34] You're teaching and teaching and teaching. And the result of that was there were missionaries trained from in the tribe, And they would go cross-culturally to other tribal groups with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
[28:51] They came to our mission on one occasion. They said, you have brought the gospel to us, and we were saved. You taught us how to take the gospel to other people groups.
[29:03] And we have done that. And they now need God's word in their talk. In other words, their language. We would like to have you teach us how to translate the word of God.
[29:23] And I know we Mennonites. I remember our neighbor in Paraguay. He said to my dad on one occasion, He said, those tribal people, those moral people to the north of us, They can never get saved.
[29:37] God will never take them because they're murderers. And the day came when they would work in the Mennonite colonies.
[29:50] They had learned the low German language. And one of the people, when they went for an interview for a job, One of the first questions they would ask the Mennonites is, Are you born again?
[30:04] And if the answer was yes, They would put their arm around them, And then we can fellowship. If the answer was no, Do you have a Bible?
[30:15] Yes. Do you read it? Well, sometimes. You have a Bible and you don't read it every day. And so here are the people that my neighbor said, Said to my dad, And I heard him in later years, He told me the same thing.
[30:32] When I told him that I was on mission work, And he said, You cannot tell me that God will accept them into heaven. That man died, I don't know whether he's in heaven.
[30:46] Because he refused to believe the message that I shared with him. He could have responded later on. So those are just some of the things, The impact of the gospel.
[31:00] Paul says, I'm not ashamed, Regardless of whether I get accepted or rejected. And so as a result, Many people were saved.
[31:13] And as a result of that, The gospel went to the uttermost part of the Roman Empire. I think I'm getting close to the end of my time.
[31:24] So, And he explained how God had made himself known. Did you know there are no atheists among tribal people?
[31:37] You have to be educated not to believe in God. Goes back to what my friend said. Some people, They get an education.
[31:47] He said, They're educated beyond their intelligence. And Paul verifies that right here. He says, Because they knew God, They did not glorify him as God.
[32:00] Nor were thankful, But became futile in their thoughts, And in their foolish hearts, Were darkened.
[32:14] You see, If we reject truth, We don't continue to grow in life. I believe that our Mennonite people, And the many, many needs that we see among our Mennonite people, Is as a result of their hearts being darkened, Because they rejected the truth of the word of God.
[32:42] And I want to encourage you, Don't be one of them. Because you can't stay enlightened as you are, If you are not born again.
[32:55] And you continue to choose to walk in darkness. And to walk in the light is to follow the word, The teaching of the word of God, In such a manner, That you are a continuous learner, Where you learn the truth of the word of God.
[33:14] And it says there, Foolish hearts were darkened, Professing to be wise, As they became fools, And changed the glory of the incorruptible God, Into an image made like corruptible man, And birds, And four-footed animals, And creeping things.
[33:37] You see, The thing is, And this is biblical, The truth is, That if we reject the truth, We become foolish, And our hearts are darker than they were before.
[33:54] I remember when, When, Two years before, My family came to Canada in 1959, My dad went with a group of men to Bolivia, To check out the land.
[34:07] Because you see, The first Mennonites to settle, In Bolivia, That I know of, Were Mennonites from Meno Colony, Where I grew up.
[34:21] My grandmother, She was my dad's stepmother, Actually, My grandmother, And, Her children, That were born to her, They moved to Bolivia.
[34:37] They left Canada, Because my grandmother, Didn't like the preacher, And she tried to poison him. So the church was going to excommunicate them. So they skipped off to Paraguay in 1927.
[34:51] I believe it was 1957, My grandmother and her son-in-law, Were caught stealing, And the church was going to discipline them.
[35:04] And they skipped off to Bolivia. And there, On the corner of her quarter of land, The EMMC, Built a medical clinic, And Dave and Tina Wiebe, Were the first ones, To look after that clinic.
[35:25] And Dave was a horrible preacher. He had no gifting in the pulpit at all. But he was a fantastic personal worker. Tina Wiebe was a nurse, Highly skilled.
[35:40] And she would witness to the ladies, When they came to her for checkups. And many people came to personal faith. In Jesus Christ. Some of those people, Have served with our mission, For many years.
[35:58] And after Dave and Tina left, They, On one occasion, Went to a wedding in the colony, Where grandma was. And grandma had said, Diep should believe zatter.
[36:12] Mrs. Wiebe, Stay put. And when the church was empty, Then grandma turned to her, And said, Can a person know, That you are born again?
[36:30] And Tina said to grandma, Yes, the Bible says. And she said, Last week, I had a visit from the bishop, And one of the pastors, And for three hours, They told me, You cannot know, That you are saved.
[36:47] And for three hours, Grandma said, I know, That I am born again. So I will see her in heaven.
[37:00] But that's the power of the gospel. That's the result of the proclamation. And they witnessed for many years to grandma. And she came to personal faith in Jesus Christ.
[37:14] So I want to challenge you, It doesn't matter how young you are, You can share the gospel. The first one that ever shared the plan of salvation with me, Was a 12 year old boy, When I was 15.
[37:28] And he was small, And he stood, And he pointed his finger in my face, He said, Unless you accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior, You're going straight to hell. Wasn't very tactful.
[37:46] But the spirit of God used that For the next five years, To bring me to personal faith in Jesus Christ. Let's pray.
[37:56] Our father, We thank you for your word. We thank you for the power of the gospel. We thank you, Lord, That we have the privilege of being involved in that.
[38:07] I thank you for this church, This congregation. And pray, Lord, That you would bless each one of them. There are many new faces here. I pray, Lord, That through the ministry of the word of God, They will become a part of this church, That carry the ministry beyond their borders, Beyond their boundaries.
[38:30] And Lord, That you will use them mightily. For I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.