I. THE HOLY SPIRIT EMPOWERS US (ACTS 1:8).

1. The job of evangelizing the entire world can never be accomplished in our own strength.
2. When we study the lives of great missionaries, such as William Carey, David Livingstone, Hudson Taylor, Adoniram Judson, and others, we see that they were well trained.
3. For example, when he was 17-years old, Hudson Taylor knew that God was calling him to China. He prepared himself by reading books on China, analyzing the Chinese Gospel of Luke, and studying medicine. He also studied Greek, Hebrew, and Latin.
4. In order to prepare for the strenuous life of a pioneering missionary, he exercised regularly in the open air, and he exchanged his comfortable feather bed for a hard mattress.
5. Regularly each week he distributed Gospel tracts and held cottage prayer meetings. By all accounts, he was well trained and prepared for useful service in China.
6. Furthermore, Hudson Taylor was a great man of prayer.  Early in his ministry, before he ever sailed for China, he understood John 14:13, "And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son."
7. However, when Hudson Taylor got to China, he began to understand that he could not effectively serve God without the mighty filling of the Holy Spirit (John 7:37-39).
8. Hudson Taylor wrote in a letter, "I have the very passage for you, a passage God has so blessed to my own soul, John 7:37-39, 'If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink'... No matter how difficult my service, how sad my bereavement, how helpless I am, how deep are my soul-yearnings, Jesus can meet all my needs. Moreover, He says: 'He who believes Me, trusts Me fully, from within him shall flow...' Can it be so? Can the thirsty soul not only be refreshed, but so saturated that streams flow down from it? Even so! And not mere mountain torrents, full while the rain lasts, then dry again; but 'from within him shall flow rivers of living water' — rivers like the Yangtze, always a mighty stream, always flowing, deep and irresistible" (J. Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret).
9. In Luke 24:49, our Lord said, "And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high."
10. The promise of the Father is the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit (cf. John 14:16, 17, 26; 15:26, 27; 16:7-14).
11. Before He ascended into heaven, our Lord said, "And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high."
12. The disciples tarried in the city of Jerusalem, until they were endued with power from on high.  And we read in Acts 2:4, "And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost."
13. Peter proclaimed this to the large crowd assembled on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:32-41).
14. A.J. Gordon said, "Whenever, in any century, whether in a single heart or in a company of believers, there has been a fresh effusion of the Spirit, there has followed inevitably a fresh endeavor in the work of evangelizing the world.”
15. Our Lord referred to the Holy Spirit as the promise of the Father.   In Luke 11:13, our Lord said the Father will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him.

II. THE LORD JESUS SENDS US (ACTS 1:8).

1. Our Lord said in Acts 1:8, "Ye shall be witnesses unto me."  A witness is simply one who can give a firsthand account of something that he has seen, heard, or experienced.
2. The Lord Jesus has sent us out as His witnesses.  Perhaps most of us are not called to go preach the Gospel in foreign lands, but we certainly can help others who are going -- by our prayers and finances.
3. In John 20:21, our Lord said, "As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you."
4. In all four Gospels, our Lord spoke about sending forth labourers out into the mission field.  In Matthew 13:38, He said, "The field is the world."
5. In Matthew 9:37 and 38 He said, "The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest."
6. In John 4:35, our Lord said, "Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest."
7. If the fields were white already to harvest two thousand years ago, what about today?
8. We are saved to serve (Acts 1:8).

                    In the harvest field now ripened
                    There’s a work for all to do;
                    Hark! the voice of God is calling
                    To the harvest calling you.

                    Little is much when God is in it!
                    Labor not for wealth or fame.
                    There’s a crown—and you can win it,
                    If you go in Jesus’ Name.  (Kit­tie Suf­field)

III. WE ARE TO GO OUT TO THE UTTERMOST PART OF THE EARTH (ACTS 1:8).

1. In Matthew 28:19, our Lord said, "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."
2. All nations.
3. Our Lord said in Mark 16:15, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature."
4. Every creature.
5. That is quite an assignment.  There seems to be broad agreement that the world population at the time of Christ was between 200 and 300 million.
6. But there were only eleven apostles (after Judas Iscariot hung himself).
7. Acts 2:41 says "three thousand souls" were saved on the day of Pentecost.
8. Further down, at Acts 2:47 we read, "And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved."
9. There was persecution from the very beginning.  The Jewish leaders had our Lord crucified, and they hated His disciples.  They did everything they could to stop the preaching of the Gospel (Acts 4:1-3).
10. However, this did not hinder the growth of Christianity for we read in Acts 4:4, "Howbeit many of them which heard the word believed; and the number of the men was about five thousand."
11. Soon Stephen was martyred.  In fact, the Greek word translated "witness" in the book of Acts is mä'r-tüs, and it is where we get our English word "martyr" (Acts 1:8).
12. Saul of Tarsus was there when Stephen was stoned to death (Acts 7:54--8:1). Later, this fierce opponent of the Gospel became its greatest preacher.
13. Right after Saul's conversion on the road to Damascus, Ananias said to him, "Thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard" (Acts 22:15).
14. And the fierce opponent of the Gospel became the great apostle Paul.  But even Paul, with his exceptional training at the feet of Gamaliel, and his brilliant scholarly mind and intellect, could not successfully preach the Gospel, and win souls, and train workers, and plant churches, and write half of the New Testament in his own strength.
15. As soon as he met him, Ananias said, "Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost" (Acts 9:17).
16. And immediately he was baptized, and went out and preached Christ in the synagogues (Acts 9:18, 20).
17. The Jews in Thessalonica complained about Paul and the other Christians and said in Acts 17:6, "These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also."
18. It wasn't just the enemies of the Gospel who were making these claims. To the Christians in Rome, Paul wrote, "Your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world" (Rom. 1:8).
19. And in Romans 10:17 and 18, Paul says, "So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. But I say, Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world."
20. Paul writes in Colossians 1:23, "The gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven."
21. And he writes in Colossians 1:5 and 6, that the Gospel "is come unto you, as it is in all the world; and bringeth forth fruit."
22. Paul wrote that about 64 AD.  During his lifetime the inhabited world was evangelized.
23. Pliny the younger, who was born in 61 AD, was a magistrate of ancient Rome, and lived during the generation following the apostle Paul.  In a letter to the Roman emperor written in the year 112 AD, while he was the proconsul of Bithynia and Pontus, observed that Christianity had spread throughout his province, notably in the cities, but also in the surrounding villages and country districts.  He mentioned in his letter that the pagan temples were all practically deserted and their pagan rites abandoned.
24. Justin Martyr, a Christian apologist from the same era (103–165 AD), said "there is not one single race of men, whether barbarian or Greek or whatever they may be called, nomads, or vagrants, or herdsmen dwelling in tents" that had not heard the Gospel preached.
25. But what about today?  Today there are nearly seven billion people inhabiting our planet, and many have never heard the name of Jesus Christ.
26. There were about 300 million people in Paul's day, but there are seven billion in ours.
27. We cannot all go, but we can all pray.
28. We cannot all go, but we can all give to missions.
29. A few years back, I took several missionaries out to eat during our annual missions conference.  One missionary told me that several members told him they did not understand faith promise missions.

CONCLUSION:

1. A.B. Simpson was a preacher who had a great burden to get the Gospel out all around the world, and God used him in a great way.
2. Over one hundred years ago, he wrote the words to this Gospel song:

                      To the regions beyond I must go, I must go
                      Where the story has never been told;
                      To the millions that never have heard of His love,
                      I must tell the sweet story of old.

    

                      To the regions beyond I must go, I must go,
                      Till the world, all the world,
                      His salvation shall know.

3. A.B. Simpson did not serve the Lord as a missionary in a far-away land.  He spent his entire ministry laboring as a pastor first in Canada, and then many years right here in New York City.
4. But he devoted his life in helping to get men and women to the mission field, and was a tireless supporter of missions.
5. A.B. Simpson is in heaven now.  He gave the Lord his best. Let us do our part in getting the Gospel out to the uttermost part of the earth.