In the name of our Lord, the God of grace and glory, dear fellow recipients of his power,

More than 300 years before the time of Christ, Alexander the Great was marching across Asia Minor as the commander of the greatest army ever assembled up to that time. This war machine had conquered every foe. No one could stand up against them. When they reached the Himalaya Mountains, the leaders of the front-line came back to Alexander, filled with concern and apprehension. “We have marched off the map,” they said to him. “We should go back to where we know.” They had literally marched off the known map of that time. Alexander listened to them and then said this, “Mediocre armies always stay within the known areas. The great armies always march off the map.”

Alexander the Great wasn’t the only conqueror to give the orders, “March off the map!” In one little verse today, we hear Jesus, the mightiest Conqueror of all, the One who conquered death itself, give those same orders to you and me. Fellow soldiers, today our Savior gives us the command:

“March Off the Map!”

I. March together as a Spirit-led Church

II. March together as a risk-taking Church

III. March together as a reproducing Church

Before sounding the orders to march, our Savior makes a promise. He says (v 8), “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.” As you listen to those words, stop to think what a difference it makes for us to be a Spirit-led army, a Spirit-led Church. First of all, it gives us direction. The Holy Spirit provides the Church with an understanding of what we should be concerned about. That’s not something that comes naturally. Remember the disciples who first heard these words from Jesus? They had walked with Jesus for three years. They had witnessed his resurrection. After he came back to life, he spent another 40 days with them, making it crystal clear to them that he had conquered death. But what were they concerned about? Their heads were still stuck in earthly sand as they asked their Lord (Ac 1:6), “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

Friends in Christ, without the Holy Spirit, that’s you and me. Without the Holy Spirit, that’s our church body. On our own it’s impossible for us to understand what’s truly important. It’s impossible for us to comprehend spiritual things and how important they are. Just like those first disciples, it’s so easy for us to let our personal ideas about what the church should be doing interfere with what the Lord wants done. When that happens, programs become more important than people. Beautiful buildings become more important than bodies won for Christ. Organizations become more important than the Lord’s marching orders. That’s why Jesus sends his Spirit! By walking us through his Word, the Spirit makes sure we’re not left spiritually wandering or wondering what we’re supposed to be doing. The Spirit leads us to see Jesus as our Savior and to recognize that our job here on this earth is to be witnesses of that Savior. And we are to march together as a Spirit-led Church, eager to follow the directions given to us.

But being a Spirit-led Church not only provides direction for our marching. It also gives us confidence to march. Christ, our Commander, says, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.” Just look at the impact the Holy Spirit’s power had on those disciples. Just a few weeks earlier, one of them had fled naked in the Garden of Gethsemane, while another crumbled under the questioning of a servant girl and denied his Lord. In the end, all of them abandoned their Savior. But later on, given the Spirit’s power, those same disciples were changed from frightened cowards to fearless confessors. Empowered by the Spirit, they could even perform miracles – driving out demons and curing diseases. But the greatest demonstration of the Spirit’s power wasn’t seen in outward miracles. It would be seen in the effect their message would have on human hearts! Remember that first Pentecost Sunday? Led by the Spirit, the disciples preached to the crowds assembled in Jerusalem that day. Under the Spirit’s power, their message took hearts once filled with hatred for the Savior and turned them in hearts pulsating with love for the Savior. That’s power! That’s amazing power!

That same amazing power has been given to us. We have the same gospel, the power of God for the salvation of all who believe. But we forget that at times, don’t we? We forget or underestimate the Spirit’s power. Sometimes, almost like those disciples hiding behind locked doors, we sit around and wring our hands about how many enemies are out there in the world – a world in which there are now more unbelievers than at any other time in history – and we’re tempted to throw in the towel and give up. We forget about the power that God has placed in our hands, the raw power of the gospel that can still do today what it did back in the first century. As a Spirit-led Church we have the power to pour water on a baby’s head, apply God’s Word, and know that another soul is brought into God’s kingdom. As a Spirit-led Church we have the power to offer bread and wine connected to God’s promise and know that sinners can be assured that they are once again in a right relationship with God. As a Spirit-led Church, we have the power to proclaim simple Bible stories to little children and know that the gospel is shattering hearts of stone and leading these little ones to faith. Fellow soldiers of our Lord, we can march confidently together as a Spirit-led Church because that same Spirit equips us with the power of God.

As a Spirit-led Church, we can also march together as a risk-taking Church. Jesus gives us this challenge when he gives us his marching orders and says (v 8), “You will be my witnesses.”

Why is being a witness considered risky business? Look again at the disciples. As they witnessed about Christ and for Christ, their lives were immediately at risk. They were tortured for even mentioning his name. They were put on trial, imprisoned, banished, and even executed for just proclaiming what they knew, what they had witnessed. It shouldn’t surprise us, then, that the Greek word for “witness” is actually the word from which we get our word “martyr.”

But it’s not only the external threats that make witnessing risky. At least, here in our country, there aren’t too many people who will torture, imprison, or kill us for speaking about our Savior. Most likely, the bigger risks confronting us come from inside us. As individual witnesses, we face the fear of failure. Will I say the right thing? Will I embarrass myself? Will I embarrass my Savior? Will I end up with more questions about my own faith when I’m done? Faced with these risks, we often end up with the same fearful attitude of that servant who buried the talent his master gave him instead of putting it to work.

Sometimes it’s not the fear of failure that we find too risky – it’s the fear of success. We can be like those soldiers who came to Alexander the Great and said, “We should go back to where we know.” We realize that witnessing could lead us to places where we’ve never been before. Witnessing can take us out of our comfort zone. As a church body, we see more and more people moving into our neighborhoods who are different from us. I learned just this week that here in Wichita we have over 7000 Vietnamese people, ranking us 24^th in the nation and third among Midwestern cities. How do we reach out to them? How can we as a synod penetrate the big cities of our country? Can we afford to do so? Do you know that we spend close to $300,000 a year with our mission efforts in New York City? Are we willing to change how we do ministry – not changing the message but perhaps the method – to reach out to different cultures and to reach in to different areas, even if it might seem risky?

Yes, the risks are always going to be there, but look at the rewards God gives when we take risks in his name. You saw in the video the blessings of our Hmong ministry up in Wisconsin. You don’t have to look that far – take a look in our own circuit, up in Kansas City, where just last year four Hmong men were trained and ordained into the public ministry. Was reaching out to a new people risky? You bet it was! But it’s forced our church body to look at ministry from a different perspective. It prompted us to develop a new ministerial training program called the Pastoral Studies Institute which helps us train leaders for ministry from other cultures. And it hasn’t been cheap to do so either. But hasn’t the risk been worth it? We now have several Hmong men serving as full-time pastors in our church body – some here in our country, with others having gone back to Southeast Asia to reach out with the gospel. God moved us to take a risk and now literally hundreds of people from another culture are marching together with us a as a Spirit-led church.

Do you think God wants us to be a risk-taking Church? Listen again to his orders: “You will be my witnesses.” He’s not offering to negotiate with us. He isn’t asking for our input. He’s not overly concerned about whether or not being a witness is exactly what we had in mind. He leaves us no options. We will be what he makes us to be: his witnesses. Fellow soldiers, let us march together as a risk-taking Church because that’s what our Savior calls us to be.

And now for the fun part! What does a Spirit-led Church and a risk-taking Church become? A reproducing Church! On the tail end of his marching orders Jesus adds these words (v 8), “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” We see this happen almost immediately. Ten short days later, led by the Spirit and taking a risk by witnessing to a crowd that once had cried out, “Crucify him!”, the disciples saw firsthand how God made his Church a reproducing Church. On that first Pentecost Christianity became a worldwide event. People from Africa, Arabia, Greece, and Italy were all there to hear Peter’s Spirit-led, risk-taking sermon that day. And they believed. Three thousand were added to their number that day. Later on we find Peter witnessing before the Jews at the temple in Jerusalem and before the Sanhedrin. Keep reading in Acts and you’ll find Philip witnessing to some Samaritans and to an Ethiopian. Read some more and you come across Paul witnessing in Asia, Greece, Italy, and all the islands in between.

Today, the testimony of these eyewitnesses continues to be proclaimed. Today Christ’s Church is still a reproducing Church. When a mother sings, “I Am Jesus’ Little Lamb” to her little baby, God’s Church is a reproducing Church. When a pastor proclaims to his congregation, “Through Jesus you are forgiven,” God’s Church is a reproducing Church. When a grandfather witnesses to his grandchildren from his deathbed by saying, “I’m going home to be with my Savior, ” God’s Church is a reproducing Church. These situations and many like them can be considered our “Jerusalems” today.

But what about our “Judeas and Samarias”? What about reaching “to the ends of the earth” today? It’s happening! Whenever the gospel message is translated into new languages, as we are now doing through our WELS Multi-Language Publications, God’s Church is a reproducing Church. Whenever missionaries march into new fields like Mozambique with the gospel message, God’s Church is a reproducing Church. When we send young people around the world to teach “English as a Second Language” classes and to wear their faith on their sleeves as they do so, God’s Church is a reproducing Church. When we use the Internet to make a Spanish-speaking worship service available to people all over the world, God’s Church is a reproducing Church.

Fellow soldiers, open your eyes and you’ll see that God’s Church is marching right off the map! We can’t turn back now — there’s so much for us to do, so many places for us to go with the gospel. So let’s continue to march together, hand-in-hand, as a Spirit-led Church, as a risk-taking Church, and as a reproducing Church! Let’s be part of something great. As Alexander the Great put it, “the great armies always march off the map!”

Amen
–Rev. Jonathan Rockhoff