have been happy with the 3,000 who were saved on one day, and the 5,000 saved on another. But the Lord Jesus had said, “Expand! Go to the uttermost parts of the earth!” Is our Lord’s com mission any different today? Of course it is not! It is your job and mine, therefore, to be in a constant program of expanding. Sometimes this can be done through the area of prayer, or through the medium of exhortation. It may be by the dedicating of our young people to the service of Christ. Then notice that in this process we are to “spare not.” That simply means we are to give everything we possess. Why? Simply because this is the most important work in the world. Then we are to lengthen our cords. This is just another way of saying, “Enlarge the place of thy tent.” “Lengthen thy cords, strengthen thy stakes.” in most of our churches we work things just the other way around. We tell folks, “Now as soon as we have a strong church, and as soon as the mortgage is paid, and as soon as things get back to normal in the business world, then we will expand our mis sionary program. This is not God’s method. He says to lengthen our cords first. In the process of that we will strengthen our stakes. These two go hand in hand, but first things must come first. We see this continually in the Word of God. Every church ought to have a representative for whom they are caring on some mission field. Some people may ask, “But how do I know it’s going to work? Suppose I pour all my money into the work and there are no results?” Let us read on from Isaiah, “Thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles (the heathen world)” (Verse 3). As we invest in, and enlarge the work of God, we have His promise of possession. I would urge you to con sider the claims of the Gospel upon your own life, and then give attention to what Isaiah has to say. We must be involved in this great program of en larging, expanding, and lengthening to reach a lost world for the Lord Jesus Christ. May God help us to do just that!
The Field is the World (continued) fore a group of pastors in England. As his text he used part of the 54th chapter of Isaiah, “More are the children of the desolate than the children of the mar ried wife, saith the Lord” (Isaiah 54:1). How true this is. There are far more people around the world who do not know the Lord Jesus as Saviour than those who do know Him. Only seven out of every 100 in the world have heard about Christ sufficiently to under stand the way of salvation. How few of those seven have really believed on Him? There are countries dominated by false religions, and thus the people have been denied the privilege of hearing the message of eternal life. Regardless of where we look around the world we see that true Christians are in the vast minority. We may well ask ourselves, “What is the reason for this; what is back of it all? Why is it that with all of the tremendous facilities available to the church there should be more who do not know the Lord than those who do?” Rather than just seeking for the reason let me bring you the Scrip tural answer. William Carey used verse two of Isaiah 54, and through him began the modem missionary movement. The Holy Spirit, writing through the proph et, tells us, “Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes.” First there is the suggestion that we are to enlarge the place of our tent. This brings to our attention the thought of constant expansion. By expansion, of course, we don’t mean just building a larger church and related facilities. We are to go out further and further to the ends of the earth through mis sionary families who will reach men and women for the Lord Jesus Christ. In the first century church, after the Lord Jesus had given His apostles a distinct and definite command, they did go into all the world and preach the Gospel. They could have stayed in Jerusalem. They could have built a beautiful church, and everyone would
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