Where the People Are (God's Sheep Missions 2013, Day Two)

Tuesday:	Where the People Are
Bible Lesson:	Lamb of God: Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins, so that we don't have to. (Isaac and the Ram)
Memory Verse:	Romans 4:25
Missions Concepts:	A missionary goes wherever there are people who need to hear the good news.
Missions Examples:	Craig and Sara Noyes
Bible Passages:	John 10, Acts 16:6-15, Matthew 28:18-20, Isaiah 52, Romans 10:8-15

Introduction: Sheep

We said yesterday that a shepherd is a person who takes care of sheep. So what would a shepherd be if he didn't have any sheep? [Nothing. No shepherd at all.] A person who wants to be a shepherd has to have sheep. You can't just make sheep, out of fluff and paper mache. You have to go where there are some sheep. You can start with just a few, but if you aren't around any sheep at all, you can't be a shepherd.

Review:

Yesterday, when we talked about pastors and missionaries, we said that people are like sheep, and the shepherds have to teach them God's word, which is like feeding them.

Main Point: Where the People Are

But where do they find sheep? Wherever there are people who need to hear about God, that's where missionaries have to go, because that's where they will find their sheep.

Do we have foreign missionaries here in Galion? Do we need missionaries to come from far away and teach us about God? [No.] We have churches and pastors here, and many Christians. There are, of course, other people here who need to hear about God and need to follow Jesus, but we don't need foreign missionaries to come and tell them, because we have people here who can tell them. We can tell them. We can tell our own friends about Jesus, and we can invite them to Bible School and to church, so that they can hear more. So we don't need foreign missionaries.

But some places don't already have Christians. They speak another language, and they don't have the Bible in their own language yet. They don't have local pastors. So who is going to tell them about Jesus? They need missionaries to come and tell them.

Example: Craig and Sara Noyes

Pastor Craig Noyes and his wife Sara want to go someplace where there are people who have never heard about Jesus at all, people who can't even get the Bible in their own language, because nobody has translated the Bible's words over into their language yet.

Here, we speak English. Can you get the Bible in English? Sure, no problem. The Bible was translated into English hundreds of years ago. You can get the Bible in English, Spanish, French, lots of different languages – but not quite all of them.

Pastor Craig Noyes and his wife Sara want to go where the people have never had a copy of the Bible in their language, to people who have never had missionaries come and teach them about God. They want to go to people who have never had a shepherd.

Conclusion:

If you wanted to go, would you know how? Would you know what you'd need to take, how to learn their language, how to translate the Bible for them, and how to teach them about Jesus? Pastor Craig has already studied the Bible. He could teach us, if we needed a pastor here. But he still needs to learn how to do the missions work in places where there is no electricity, no restaurant, and no internet, where he doesn't know the language and there's no Bible in that language.

This fall, when you go back to school, Craig and Sara Noyes will go to the Missionary Training Center. They're going to take classes there for a year and a half to learn all about how to do the missions work they want to do. They need to learn how they can go where the people are – the people who have never heard about Jesus, because there's no one to tell them, people who can't read the Bible for themselves because there isn't a Bible in their language.

Invitation: Missions

Invite any children who are interested in doing missions work to stay after the lesson and discuss it further.