The question that has been weighing on me is this: why did I say yes to this invitation to speak here? Because there are so many reasons why I shouldn’t be speaking here. Let me give you four reasons so that you know what the reasons are not. There are counterparts of what they are, four pairs — what it is and what it isn’t. And that will lead me into a passage of Scripture.

Reasons for Preaching

First, it isn’t because I have been successful either in my neighborhood — which is an eight-minute walk from here — or as a leader of this church, in mobilizing us for fruitful ministry among Native peoples. It isn’t. They didn’t ask me because I’m good at this. Rather, it’s a longing. And probably at times a weak longing. It goes in waves over me as my conscience comes to me and experiences happen in my neighborhood, or in church, or in the Word. The first pair is not success, but longing that God moves. May God raise up from you a David Brainerd, or a John Eliot, or their female counterparts.

Second, it isn’t Because I have successful, extensive relationships. It isn’t really well-cultivated relationships, but rather, location. I’m here. I live in Phillips. It’s called Ventura Neighborhood now. They split it up. My little piece is Ventura, but it’s Phillips to me, and I’ve been there for 30 years. How many Native Americans do I know? There’s a little, teeny handful. So it isn’t because of any extensive web of relationships, but rather that I’m here. I ought to be doing more by virtue of proximity, which implies accountability.

Third, It isn’t because of creativity. At Bethlehem, we have not come up with the creative way to do ministry in this city among Native peoples. We’ve not come up with the creative breakthrough, but rather, we have convictions. I have convictions about God having a people among Native Americans.

And Fourth, there’s a history. This is not a pair. It’s just a single word. There’s a history in our country. I don’t want to tell a sad story. I want to tell a few remarkably successful stories to increase your hope that it’s possible. It’s possible to see something extraordinary because it has happened before, and I’m going to give you a couple of examples near the end.

The Good Shepherd and His Sheep

Here’s my approach against that backdrop of inadequacy. I want to go to the Scriptures and then I want to go to the stories. The conviction that I have is based on Scripture, and the conviction is confirmed by two stories of two great missionaries to native peoples in this country.

The text I’m going to invite you to turn to with me, if you have a Bible or want to reach for one of those blue ones under the pew, is John 10:11–16. I’m going to talk about just one verse, John 10:16. But let’s read a little bit of the context. My reason for going to this text is that in the history of missions and in my life, few texts have been more annoying and goading and effective and powerful than John 10:16. Let me read it in context with you:

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

A People Besides Those Already Converted

I have four observations that are in this text, and each one of these observations is designed to encourage you that God means to move among Native peoples. He means to move and get a people for himself bigger than he already has. He means to do something more. That’s what I hope these four things will encourage you to believe.

Number one: Christ has a people besides those already converted. We’ll take it a piece at a time. He has people out there besides those already converted. He says, “I have other sheep that are not of this fold” (John 10:16). In the original context, the fold was Israel. He is saying, “I’m assembling a people from Israel, but I have other sheep that are not of this fold, outside Israel,” meaning the Gentiles.

If you think about the implications of that wording, it implies the doctrine of election. He is saying, “I have a people out there. I know my own, and my own know me. My sheep hear my voice and they come.” There have always been people in the history of the church that have taken the biblical doctrine of election, let’s say from Ephesians 1:5, and said, “If you believe that God elects people, you won’t do missions.” There have always been people who have played off God’s sovereign choice of a people against missions, and they say they don’t go together. They think they contradict each other. And they’ve always been wrong. Historically, they’ve been wrong and biblically they’ve been wrong.

Let me give you a story from Urbana 1967. My fiancé and I — to whom I’ve been married now for 40 years — went to Urbana. It’s a big missions conference, InterVarsity Missions, in 1967. John Alexander was the president of InterVarsity in those days, and he had been a missionary for 20 years, at least, to Pakistan. Somebody raised this question about predestination and election, and they said, “What about that? If this is a missions conference, what are those words doing in the Bible?” I just remember his response from all that many years ago. He said, “When I first went to the mission field, I said that if I believed in predestination I would never go to the mission field. And now, after 20 years among Muslim peoples, doing my best through the power of the Holy Spirit to awaken dead hearts, I say that unless I believed in predestination, I wouldn’t go to the mission field.” That was his answer. Now I didn’t believe in it in those days. I was a rabid opponent of such things, and I sat there thinking, “Really? Hmm.”

Many in This City Are My People

Now that’s a story from Urbana. Here’s a story from the Apostle Paul in Acts 18:9–10. He was in Corinth. Believe me, winning converts from pagan Corinth was every bit as hard as the Twin Cities, and every people group in it. He was very discouraged, and it was late at night and Jesus came to him in a vision, and this is what he said to Paul in Acts 18:9–10:

And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.”

That’s exactly like Jesus saying, “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. Speak, I’ll call them. Speak, I’ll win them. I’ll draw them.” He is saying, “I have other sheep that are not of this fold, outside the present believers, outside Bethlehem Baptist Church, and outside your church. I have other people, other sheep.”

The Scattered Sheep

Number two: These other sheep, by implication, and then confirmed elsewhere in John, are scattered. They’re scattered. They’re not in one little place, as if to say, “Oh, we found them here. They’re in Minneapolis,” or, “We found them here among the responsive Filipinos,” or, “We found them here.” No. They are scattered among all the peoples, tribes, tongues, and nations.

Listen to this. This is John 11. You remember the story. Caiaphas, the high priest, has been anointed with the Spirit of prophecy and he doesn’t believe in Jesus. And he said something out of his mouth that John, the writer, interprets for us. Let me read this to you and see how you relate it to John 10:16. This is John 11:51–52:

He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.

Jesus died, not for the in group only, but to gather the children of God who are scattered. They’re everywhere. They’re among all the peoples of the world. Revelation 5:9 says:

You were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
     from every tribe and language and people and nation,
and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
     and they shall reign on the earth.

When he died, he paid for the ingathering of a people among all the peoples of the world. World evangelization in John’s mind is the ingathering of the sheep, the ingathering of the children of God. It is an enormous encouragement to believe. There are 150 Native languages in America that were here before we got here. I’m not talking about the ones that have been brought here by Europeans or by Asians. I’m just talking about Native American peoples. Some of these languages are dying. But Scripture says, “By your blood, you have purchased a people from every tongue” They’re children of God, they’re sheep, and they will come. They will come.

The Lord’s Commitment to Gather His Sheep

Number three: The Lord has committed himself to bring these sheep home. He has committed himself to do it. He says, “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also.”

Now in the 1700s, when William Carey was being stirred by texts like this, he was surrounded by people who are historically called hyper-Calvinists. A hyper-Calvinist is a person that believes that if that’s true, God will bring them. Jesus says he will. He says, “I must bring them.” So hyper-Calvinists thought we don’t need to be involved. That’s hyper-Calvinism. If God has committed himself to bring them, we can just stay out and pastor our churches. We don’t need to go to India. If God wants them saved, he’ll get them saved. He’s God.

You know as well as I do, that’s not either logical or biblical, because God uses means, and the main means that he uses is the gospel preached by human beings.

For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? (Romans 10:13–15).

That’s biblical. God has a people and he uses means to gather his sheep and to gather his children. Listen to the way Jesus does it. I love this because he’s praying for his disciples who are around him. They can hear him. And then in John 17:20 he says that he’s not only praying for them but for whom? Listen. This is John 17:20:

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word . . .

Without the word of Jesus being spoken by other human beings, nobody will get saved. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:17). Yes, scattered around are the children of God, and yes, he must bring them. Jesus says, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). But he won’t do it without you. He absolutely will not do it without his church. He won’t do it without evangelists. He won’t do it without people laying down their lives for hard-to-reach peoples.

The Harvest Is Plentiful

The power of the Holy Spirit does not fly like a jet bomber in any other formation but behind the jet of the gospel. They fly in tandem. Where the gospel goes, God the Holy Spirit goes. And if the gospel ceases to be preached, the Holy Spirit lands. We are dependent totally on the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit will not save sinners without the witness of human beings — the loving, sacrificial, going witness. Jesus says in John 17:18, “As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” That means they will go die like he did — at least to be willing to die like he came to do. What an amazing role for you.

I got an email today from one of my partners in ministry here, Kempton, and all he said was, “Praying, Matthew 9:35–38 for tonight.” I texted back immediately, “Exactly the right text,” because that had been very much on my heart. It says, “Pray to the Lord of the harvest that he would send out laborers for the harvest.” It wouldn’t take but a little handful of mighty, anointed people to bring a great turnaround.

The Sheep Will Come

Lastly, number four: They will come. Jesus says, “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice” (John 10:16). Remember what happened when Paul went to Philippi? How do you start in a totally pagan city or a city that has zero awareness of Jesus Christ?

He went out to a river and he found a little group of women praying. I don’t know how he did it, but they let him start talking. It says in Acts 16:14 that the Lord opened Lydia’s heart. And she was the first convert, the first member of the church, and the church met in her place. They will heed. The Lord opened her heart to give heed. That’s why they will heed. The Lord opens the heart of people to give heed.

Let me tell you a story of how high the price is and how powerful this word is, and then I’m going to close with my two Native American stories. This is a general missionary story that moves me about this particular text. Peter Cameron Scott is the founder of Africa Inland Mission (AIM). I don’t think it’s called the Africa Mission anymore, but it was.

He went to Africa by himself and he got very sick with the fever, as so many did, and he came home to England broken in his health, and he was very discouraged. God encouraged him, raised him up, and this time with tremendous joy, he went with his brother, John, back to Africa. Instead of having a great success, John, his brother, got the fever and he died. Peter Cameron Scott buried his brother by himself and dedicated himself to press on. You would think now that the Lord, watching this incredible devotion, would bless him with fruit. Instead, his health totally broke again. He went home a broken and very discouraged man, just like perhaps some of you are here tonight, and he was totally discouraged.

As his health began to recover, he went to Westminster Abbey. And you know, probably, who’s buried there. A lot of people are buried there. One of the most famous is David Livingstone, the missionary to Africa who was a previous generation and forged the way on to the inland. And he knelt down at this crypt and he read what was there, and you know what’s there: “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also” (John 10:16).

When Peter Cameron Scott read those words, he rededicated himself for a third time now to go by himself, and he went. And this time, God moved. Today, there are thousands of churches that are part of the network that he paid that price to establish.

I don’t know where you are on that pilgrimage. How far along in your suffering, in your discouragements are you? When will the breakthrough come? When will the collective pain and discouragements become such that now is the time? Maybe this conference is called Beginning, not because you’re beginning, but because we need a powerful beginning of something extraordinary.

Prayers and Pains Through Faith in Christ

Now let me just give you these two brief stories to show you what has happened in the past. And you probably know this better than I do, but a few of you may not know these stories. I hope they will inspire you to go get biographies. I am so very encouraged by reading Christian biography, especially missionary biographies.

The first person is John Eliot. Let me just tell you a word about him. From 1627 to 1640, 15,000 people immigrated to this country, mainly Puritans, who were filled with tremendous confidence that God was sending them there as part of the global extension of the reign of Christ. Did you know that the first seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony has a Native American Indian on it and the words “Come over to Macedonia and help us” (Acts 16:9)?

That was the seal of the state of Massachusetts. In other words, the self-conscious understanding of the early Puritans was, “Yes, we’re trying to get away from religious persecution, but we know this is uncharted territory and we want to see the kingdom of Christ extended.” Now they may have done most things wrong, but that idea of the extension of Christ’s kingdom and the winning of people was a right idea, a good idea.

One of those hope-filled Puritans was John Eliot. He crossed the Atlantic in 1631. He was 27 years old at the time, and the next year he became the pastor of the First Church of Roxbury, Massachusetts, which today is a part of Boston. In those days, it was a mile outside Boston. Then something amazing happened about 13 years later. According to Cotton Mather, who wrote the history of New England in his day up till that time, John Eliot discovered that there were 20 different tribes of Indians right around the settlements there, just a few miles out into the wilderness, as it was called.

He knelt down, and he said, “Lord, if my theology is true that you are sovereign and you mean to have a people in all the tribes and tongues and peoples and nations, then you will triumph if somebody would be faithful and go to them.” And he went. He was 40 years old and he learned the Algonquin language. Some of the words in the Algonquin language have more letters than we have letters in the alphabet. It was an extraordinarily difficult language. He translated the entire Bible into Algonquin. He also translated Baxter’s A Call to the Unconverted. He formed little schools, and he died when he was 84 years old, going strong. There were villages of Indian Christians and there were little schools of Indian Christians and there were churches pastored by Indian pastors in his day after 44 years of blood, sweat, and tears.

Another story would have to be told, a great tragedy, as to whatever happened to these. This wasn’t the only time this happened. Whatever happened? And, of course, we have a legacy of absolute horror that undid so much of what was done well. That’s story number one. John Eliot’s motto was this, “Prayers and pains through faith in Christ Jesus will do anything.” And his life showed it.

I’m praying in that way. Is there a John Eliot out here who’s 40 or 50? I’m 63. If I did what he did, I would still have 21 years. I don’t know if I’ll live 21 years, and if God wants me to not do ministry the way I’m doing now and do something different, I want to say, “God, please don’t let me miss if there’s a new chapter for my life. “ And I just hope you’ll say that with me. You may be a computer programmer, a nurse, or a schoolteacher, or a carpenter, or a pastor, or a housewife, and God this weekend is going to say, “Give me the last quarter of your life, or the last half, as it was in the case with John Eliot. I will blow your mind with what I may be pleased to do.”

A Peculiar Devotion to God

The last story is that of David Brainerd. This is about a hundred years later now in New England. He was born in 1718 in Connecticut, just as the Great Awakening was coming. There were two waves of the Great Awakening, one in the late 1730s and one in the 1740s. He lived through both of them. He saw God move in mighty ways in the churches of New England and hundreds of people became converted and joined the churches. He contracted tuberculosis and died at age 29 on October 9, 1747.

He said a miracle happened in his life at age 21. Let me read it to you. I love to read stories of people’s conversions. What is it like for people to get saved? People experience the saving power of God in so many different ways, and this is his:

As I was walking in a dark, thick grove, unspeakable glory seemed to open to the view and apprehension of my soul. It was a new inward apprehension or view that I had of God such as I never had before, nor anything that I had the least remembrance of, so that I stood still and wondered and admired. I had now no particular apprehension of any one person of the Trinity, either the Father, the Son, or the Spirit, but it appeared to be divine glory and splendor that I then beheld, and my soul rejoiced with joy unspeakable to see such a God, such a glorious, divine being.

I was inwardly pleased and satisfied that he should be God over all forever and ever. My soul was so captivated and delighted with the excellency, the loveliness, the greatness, and the other perfections of God that I was even swallowed up in him, at least to that degree that I had no thought, as I remember at first, about my own salvation, or scarce that there was such a creature as I.

Thus the Lord, I trust, brought me to a hearty desire to exalt him, to set him on the throne, and to seek first his kingdom that is principally and ultimately to aim at his honor and glory as the king and sovereign of the universe, which is the foundation of the religion of Jesus. I felt myself in a new world.

That was July 12, 1739. He was 21 years old, and two years later he entered Yale College to prepare for the ministry with zero idea about Native American ministries at all in his head. He was going to be a pastor like his hero, Jonathan Edwards. At Yale, there was at that particular moment a lot of spiritual deadness, and he was so disappointed and angry that his professors seemed to him very unspiritual, so much so that he spoke some very ill-advised words out loud and was expelled. He said that Chauncey Whittelsley, the tutor, “Has no more grace than a chair.” And he said that he wondered why the rector “did not drop down dead for fining students for their evangelical zeal.”

A Hard Yet Glorious Turn of Events

Now here is the amazing thing. He was expelled from school and was never allowed to return. There was a law that you could not be the pastor of a Congregational church if you did not have a degree from Yale, Harvard, or one of the main schools. He was excluded from his dream. He tried over and over. He apologized. He got down on his face to say, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do it. I made a mistake. I sinned.” And they wouldn’t let him in. That was one of the most wonderful things that’s ever happened in the history of the world.

I’m saying this because some of you are facing something like that right now, and you feel like it’s a closed door. You feel like it’s the last word. It’s discouraging. It’s the end of the line. And that is what Brainerd felt. Little did he know what God was going to do.

This is just like God to do this. He was contacted by a Scottish mission. America was just a colony at that point, and he was contacted by a Scottish mission to the Indians and they asked him to consider ministry with them, saying, “Would you consider Indian ministries in the New World?” And he said yes.

On June 19, 1745, he made his first preaching tour to Crossweek-sung, New Jersey, and he went to the Indians there. And God stunned him. One-Hundred and thirty Native Americans turned to Jesus in a year. It was a whole village, and he moved them to Cranberry on May, 1746. That was one of the strategies, good or ill. He moved them. They had their own town now.

Then, he became very sick with his tuberculosis, and he made one last visit to them in March of 1747, and then he died in Jonathan Edwards’a house, being cared for by his youngest daughter, Jerusha, at age 29.

The Effect of Brainer’s Diary

Now why is David Brainerd probably the most influential missionary after the Apostle Paul in the history of the world? And the reason is because Jonathan Edwards edited, compiled, and published his diaries and his journals. After the Bible and maybe after William Carey’s book about God’s purpose to use means in 1793, this book has been the most influential book among missionaries in the last 200 years.

Why is that? Why did John Wesley say, “Let every preacher read carefully over the life of David Brainerd”? Why did Henry Martyn, the missionary to the Persians, say while perusing the life of David Brainerd that his soul was filled with a holy emulation of that extraordinary man? He said, “After deep consideration and fervent prayer, I was at length fixed in my resolution to imitate his example.”

Why did William Carey regard Edwards’s Life of Brainerd as a sacred text? Why did Robert Morrison and Robert M’Cheyne in Scotland, John Mills in America, Friedrich Schwartz in Germany, David Livingstone in England, Andrew Murray in South Africa, and Jim Elliot of modern America look at Brainerd with a kind of awe and draw power from him for their own missions? Why did he have that effect from his journals and his diaries?

I think it’s a cluster of things like this. Brainerd struggled almost continually with sickness. He was coughing up blood as he rode his horse through the wilderness to his little band of Indians most of his last years. He didn’t know what to do about it. Medicine couldn’t do anything in those days. They didn’t know what that was.

He also struggled almost continually with recurring depression. It’s a pretty bleak book to read, his diaries. He was so down, so often. He struggled with loneliness. In April, 1743, he said, “Oh, I longed for some dear Christian who knew of my distress.” He was out there all alone. He never married. He was totally alone, trying to make a dent in a very dangerous place among a people. He struggled with immense external hardships, and in all of that, he was faithful. That’s why he’s so inspiring. Here’s what he wrote on April 17, 1747:

Oh, I long to fill the remaining moments all for God. Though my body was so feeble and wearied with preaching and much private conversation, yet I wanted to sit up all night to do something for God. To God, the giver of these refreshments, be glory forever and ever.

The Legacy of David Brainerd

I want to close by just publicly thanking God for David Brainerd like this. In 1986, Tom and Julie Steller and I were doing work in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he’s buried near the old Jonathan Edwards church. Edwards himself is buried in Princeton, but David Brainerd is buried near the church in Northampton, and we tracked down his grave. We stood beside it. I think little Ruthie was with us as well. She’s 27 or 28 now, though I can’t remember.

We held hands and prayed thanksgiving because of how inspiring he has been to thousands and to us. His grace is a flat slab on the ground. Not a stone that stands up, but it’s flat. The stone says:

Sacred to the memory of the Reverend David Brainerd, a faithful and laborious missionary to the Stockbridge, Delaware, and Susquehanna Tribes of Indians, who died in this town on October 10, 1747.

There were 130 converts in one year. He had been a Christian for eight years of his 29-year-old life, and only for four years of that had he been a missionary, and God blessed him for reasons that he sovereignly decided, and you may be one of those.