THR GREAT COMMISSION
MATT 28:16-20
On Thursday 15 of us went down to Cardiff and history was made, 2000 people came together to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Gospel arriving in Korea.
Pastor Jacob from Korea paid tribute to a young Welsh missionary called Robert Jermaine Thomas.
But the thing that struck me with the story was that as far as Korea went he hardly got ashore before he was martyred, but as he died his Bible landed on the ground in front of him.
The guy was not exactly Billy Graham he did not preach to thousands of people, however he was faithful and obedient and God honouredthat.
I was talking to a Korean Pastor friend,Gi Jung, and he told me about this celebration they were organising and mentioned Robert Jermain Thomas.
Fortunately he told me who he was as I would not have known and I suspect that is true of the majority of UK Christians.
But in Korea he is big they all know about him.
This got me thinking because there are some key people in the Bible whose names we do not know.
The woman caught in adultery teaches us about the grace and love of God and is used on a regular basis to explain this love to people.
We then have the Ethiopian eunuch who Philip shared the Gospel with, he was a person of influence and today the Ethiopian church one of the oldest in the world.
And my final example is the Roman centurion who approaches Jesus to heal his daughter,“you don't even need to come to my house but just say the word and she will be healed”.
Jesus says I have not seen faith like this in the whole of the house of Israel.
I am sure you can think of other examples but let us go back to Robert Jermaine Thomas.
He arrives to a hostile reception in Korea and is killed but one of his killers takes the Bible and uses it to paper his house, an interesting colour scheme but there you go.
Through this he reads the Bible, gets converted and Christianity spreads throughout Korea.
What looks like failure in human terms God uses in a mighty way.
I remember Frank Spencer in "Some mothers do aveem" and one of his catch phrases was,“I'm a failure” and I just wonder how often we tell ourselves that.
At times we labour away and see little fruit for what we are doing and it is easy to become discouraged but at times we have to spend a lot of time preparing the ground.
Its then a case of sewing seeds and I think a lot of you do this without even realising it, who knows the value of an act of kindness or a caring word at the right time.
I was talking to someone in the week about a recent bereavement and they were saying how people either avoid them or have the expectation that they are ok now.
How many people out there are hurting and need to hear the good news of Jesus Christ.
But also the three examples I gave you from the Bible had all heard of Jesus how many people in Rhondda, Wales or the UK have really heard about Jesus.
Dai Woolridge at the celebration at St David’s Hall spoke about Robert Thomas, Evan Roberts and that great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us.
Those who have been members here for a while will know people who have gone before us to be with the Lord, this is our legacy.
But we have a choice we either say that was a great show we saw or we are inspired to pick up the baton and run with it.
The UK athletics team have some great runners but often one of them drops the baton and the race is lost.
I don't want us to be the ones who drop the baton. In the Great Commission Jesus tells us to go into all the world making disciples and baptising in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
Some go to other countries and even North Wales but for others your mission field is just as you walk out that door, that is your mission field.
All mission starts with prayer so write down the names of three people you are going to pray for. Also pray that God gives you opportunity to reach out to them.
Now this is the exciting bit ask God to tell you when the time is right to share the Good News with that person.
Now I haven't thought where we get them from yet but let’s get some Christmas cards to send to these people that actually have a Christian verse in them.
There is so much need in this area it means we either all work harder or we pray also that Jesus will send us more workers.
Let us pray.