The Life of John Paton - Missionary Spotlight - March 14th, 2021

Morning, as well. So, we just finished our gospel series. And, um, this, every once in a while, we will have an opportunity to kind of highlight a, a certain missionary. Um, maybe once or twice a year. And it's to encourage us, it's to challenge us, it's to look at the saints of old and see how they walked in their lives and see how we can apply some of the things from their lives to our lives. So, I hope you're greatly blessed today as we look at a guy named John Patton. Show of hands, who's actually heard of John Paton? Okay. Oh, a handful. Yeah. All right, awesome. So, that's where we'll be going. So, what that means is we're not going to be studying a very, uh, specific piece of scripture this morning. Um, I'll have a couple things on the screens for us, but for the most part, it's kind of like, sit back and relax and let's see what God did in and through, uh, this missionary's life.

Before we begin, as well, um, I want to remind you. Uh, I think I even brought one, maybe I did. Yeah, connection card. Yeah. If you're interested on getting connected with what's happening at Bethel, this card is, is by the offering box as you walk out. And it's a great opportunity to get yourself on the email list. If you're not getting any of those emails, it also is another way to get connected with Bethel is through Facebook. So, those two methods right now, we're getting out as much information on a weekly basis. And I mentioned that because if you are getting the emails, we have a very unique Good Friday, um, time worship time. And I say not a service because we won't be here on Good Friday this year. One of the things we want to do this year is come to the homes. So, leaders and elders of Bethel will be coming to homes if you want us to your home. So, you have to set up an appointment. On Good Friday, there'll be about a 30-minute time slot and they'll come over. There'll be a quick time of being in the scriptures together. There'll be communion together, and there'll be a time of praise as we celebrate Good Friday in your home. So, if that is something you're interested in having some of the leaders or elders come over to your house, two or three, uh, this connection card, you could have it there. You can also email, uh, Buddy Pritchard, which is Buddy at Bethelconnect.org. You can also just go to the website on the contact page and say you're interested. And so, we'll run, uh, multiple different meeting times throughout the day. Basically, we're going to start at about 8:00 AM and run it all the way to about 4:00 PM. So, if you can fit anything in that time slot and you would love some of the leaders to come to your house and have this really unique time to do communion in your home, uh, we would love to be there for this Good Friday. So, that's what we're going to do this Good Friday leading up into Easter. Sound good? So, stay connected. I want you guys to be a part of that.

All right, let's open up with a couple pieces of scripture to begin, though. Because even though we're going to highlight a lot of John Patton's life, um, I want to show you five different scripture verses right now that show forth the Great Commission. And all of us are very familiar with the Great Commission because we typically read through Matthew 28, the Great Commission, the most. But I want you to know that all the gospels have the Great Commission, and so does the book of Acts. So, it just shows the heart of God here. So, let me read these five. Here's Matthew 28. This is the most familiar one that you're aware of. "Then Jesus came to them and said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been handed over to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always.'" Mark 16: "And he said to them, 'Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick and they will recover.'" Gospel of Luke: "He opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, 'Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are my witnesses to these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.'" Gospel of John: "Jesus said to them again, 'Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.' And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.'" And lastly, Acts 1:18: "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Do we think Jesus' mission involves his disciples going out into the world to preach this great news? And amen. Yes.

Let's pray. Father, as we enter into, uh, this time to look at the life of John Patton, we could see that from his life, that he had such a burning heart for you, for your gospel, and to get this gospel to the ends of the world, like we just read in these five scripture verses. That, Father, there's so many things that we can grow and learn. So, Holy Spirit, I ask now that as, as we jump into his life, as we see who this man was, that, Father, we will be greatly encouraged, we'll be greatly challenged, and that, Lord, when we leave here this morning, we'll be changed. We'll be changed as a result of seeing a faithful saint doing your work. And, Father, it's not just seeing his work, it's, Father, looking at that and going, "Okay, Lord, how do you want to use me in the fulfillment of this Great Commission in the here and the now, through me?" Lord Jesus, we pray all this in your name. Amen. Amen.

All right, last week I closed with a quote from Tozer. So, I want to take that quote that I used from last week and I want to begin this sermon this week with it. Here's what I said. He said, "Tozer, we will hardly get our feet out of time into eternity and gaze on eternity that we will bow our heads in shame and humiliation and say, 'My, my God, look at all those riches that there were in Jesus Christ, and I have come to the judgment seat a poor person.'" We looked last week at the rewards of what we receive as faithful men and women of the gospel, as faithful Christians, being faithful and obedient to the commands that Christ has given to you and I and to live them out. We're going to see a man that also lived faithfully for the Lord Jesus Christ, and his name is John Patton.

In 1773, there's this chain of 80 islands in the South Pacific, and it was actually explored by the famous Captain James Cook. It was the New Hebrides Islands because of the similarity to the Hebrides Islands that were close to Scotland, and so that's why he named it after that. As he explored those islands, but in 1980, the New Hebrides Islands actually changed their name to Vanuatu. So, you might be familiar with that. And if you were to look at a map, you would see Australia being kind of the central thing, or everybody knows where Australia's at, right? And so, if you look at Australia, you can see where this chain of 80 islands are. New Zealand's over there, and Papua New Guinea kind of in that part of the South Pacific. Now, it wasn't until a man by the name, and this is at least recorded that we are aware of and know, it wasn't until a man by the name of John Williams and James Harris from the London Missionary Society landed there in 1839 that there was any type of at all Christian influence until they reached there. And when they got there, sent by their mission group, the two of them get out of the boat, they go to land, and within seconds are killed. Not only are they killed, and people on this boat are watching this happen and take place out in this port, they're killed, and then the fire is lit, and these people feast on their bodies. This was what John Patton said 48 years later: "This was the New Hebrides Islands, now finally baptized with the blood of the martyrs, and Christ thereby told the whole Christian world that he claimed these islands for his own." So, can you imagine being a part of the London Missionary Society, hearing about these two faithful men who were going down there to bring forth the gospel to a land that nobody knew anything really about, and then upon their arrival, their death and then cannibalism? Be a kind of a hard sell, I think, in London to try to get a couple more missionaries to get down there, don't you think? But they did. That I mean, there were men and women, I don't know if you know this, in the 1800s that even knowing and facing death would still go. Would still go.

So, the next wave, uh, of people that went was a guy by the name of John Gethie, and he was from the Presbyterian Church in Nova Scotia. He went there in about 1848. And another guy by the name of John Inglis from the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Scotland, he got there about, uh, 1852. And they saw amazing fruit as they went to another island there called Aniwa, Aniwa, Aniwa. And there, by the time they finished doing their ministry there, they saw over 3,500 of these cannibals, these savage people they called them, come to faith in Christ. So, they started to see that it can be fruitful. The gospel can penetrate here.

So, who's John Patton? Well, I just wanted to give you a little foretaste of what was there before him. So, John Patton was born in Scotland on the 24th of May, 1824. For he was the oldest of five sons and six daughters. Their home had two rooms, small room, a little kind of cottage setting. It had, it had two rooms. One was Mama's domain, okay? It's where Mom was. But think about this, that's where the kitchen was, the dining room was, the parlor was, and the bedrooms were all in that space. In between those two spaces was this, this tiny small closet that could only fit maybe a bed for someone to sleep in. And then on the other side was Dad's space. And when I say Dad's space, Dad's space was pretty much his business. Uh, his dad, John Patton's dad, did clothing. He made men's clothing. And so he had other workers come in to that side of the house, and throughout the day, they would be making clothing. That was his work. That was his job.

At the age of 12, John had to quit school. And is there any, uh, yeah, there's a couple kids in here still. Oh, they were like, "Yeah, quit school." Uh, but he quit school to go into Dad's trade. Now, listen to this, okay? Here's John Patton's day at about 12 years old after quitting school. Had to quit school to help the family with resources. He would wake up at 6:00 in the morning and work till 10:00 PM with one hour break for lunch, a half hour for breakfast, and a half hour for dinner. And during those spare moments for John Patton, he'd love to read. So, in those spare break moments, he would read books. It was also at the age of 12 that John surrendered his life to Christ. And it was at 12 years old that he resolved in his heart that, "I want to become a missionary or a minister for the gospel of Jesus Christ." At 12 years old, after having enough money, though, after working in the family trade, he wanted to get back into school. And so he was able to do that with working for his father. He saved up enough, um, and went off to school in his local town there in Scotland. And to subsidize his income to be able to go to school, he would get into farming. So, now he's farming. And while he was in school, all the other kids would be playing sports. And when there was break times, the kids would all be together hanging out. But John Patton was not that kid. He was the kid that loved to grab a book, go by the riverbank, and read. And the superintendent eventually saw this in John Patton. Wow, this kid is like dedicated to his studies and to his books. And so the superintendent came in and said, "I will give you a seven-year full ride scholarship, but you got to promise me after seven years, you'll enter into government work." And John Patton says, "I can't do that. I'll give you three, but I'm not going to give you seven." He goes, "Well, free education, why would you not do this?" And John Patton says this: He says, "My life is given to another Master, to the Lord Jesus Christ, and I want to prepare as soon as possible for service in proclaiming the gospel." Here's the heart of this young man.

John receives an offer to teach Sunday school in Glasgow, which is about 40 miles from where his home was. In return, he was going to get one year free education. But while in Glasgow, John also applied to become a city missionary. And there wasn't a lot of people applying for that position, so he actually gets this position. As he arrives to Glasgow, and so what John would do is he would spend about four hours in the morning to go and visit people, just random people, going to homes, introducing himself, introducing the gospel, having conversations. Then throughout the afternoon, he would hold prayer times and prayer meetings and engagements that happened that were fruitful. They would lead into the afternoon. And then at nighttime, he would lead Bible studies and all kinds of different meetings. And he did this for 10 years and was extremely fruitful in his ministry. I mean, we're talking hundreds upon hundreds of people, we're not only hearing the gospel, we're coming to the faith, we're entering into local churches, we're serving, and we're being discipled. And John Patton himself was very dedicated to the poor, a group of people that most people at that time didn't even want to reach, but John did. And so he did this for 10 years, all the while still going to school and even learning, uh, the medical field as well and going to medical classes, uh, medical classes as well.

John's church that he was plugged into was a healthy church, a vibrant church, and a lot of his missionary work was plugging into this local body and all the work that he was doing there. And for two years, his pastor would keep talking about these islands out there, these Vanuatu Islands, and saying, "We need some missionaries from this body to go there and help John Inglis with his missionary work out there." And so he kept hearing this as he was sitting in part of his church for up to two years. And eventually, this thought came to his mind. He said, "This is what the Lord told me. He said, 'Since none better qualified can be found, rise and offer yourself.'" And so he immediately goes to his prayer closet and through prayer, he was confident that he heard the voice of God within him, and that God was calling him to go reach the cannibals. And so for the next 12 months, John is going through kind of missionary training for the foreign field. And here's the thing with John, with 10 years of successful ministry under his belt as a young man, nobody, nobody wanted him to leave. Like, why in the world would you leave all this success and all this fruit and everything that you've done and created to go to the cannibals? So, he only had one friend that supported him, and his mom and dad, that was it. But everybody else was against him. Even his own pastor that was looking for the missionaries, even his seminary professors said, "Why would you waste your life doing that?" It eventually got so good for John Patton that they even offered him a higher salary. "We'll give you more money, we'll give you patronage so you can stay and live for free and stay in Glasgow. God has obviously got his hand on you, stay here and keep doing the work in ministry. Let some others go there. We can't afford to send our best and brightest out there." But if you ever study early missionary movements in the Christian church, you're going to notice that the best and the brightest were the ones that were going to the mission field. We don't do that anymore in the church. We, we like to reserve our best and brightest for seminaries and scholarship and maybe even just a worldly trade to use those skill sets. But back then, you see the best and the brightest going to the mission field. But everybody was trying to stop him. It even got to a point where John started doubting, "Maybe I'm not supposed to go. Maybe, maybe that really wasn't the call. Maybe I really didn't hear God's voice." But the more he prayed, the more he knew. He even had a dear old friend by the name of Mr. Dickerson. He said, Mr. Dickerson said this, he says, "Cannibals? You'll be eaten by the cannibals." John replied, "This is great. This, this is going to make you fall in love with John." "You can never happen today. You are advanced in years, and your own prospect of death is soon, and the grave is right there. You'll be soon be laid into the grave there. When you're in the grave, you'll be eaten by worms." Can you imagine saying that to somebody? And then he says this, "I confess that to you that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I'm eaten by cannibals or by worms. And in the great day, my resurrected body will arise just as fair as yours in the likeness of our Risen Redeemer." Woo! It's interesting how, how such a young person could have such a grasp on eternity and the gospel. Like we just been studying, that death and the thought of death even had no hold on him. And I only mention this because we all fall into this trap today. If we don't want to leave this place, right? I mean, we know the verse, "To live is Christ, and to die is gain." But do we really live by that verse? Like, do we really believe that verse? Like, we're all more scared to kind of die or have bad things happen to us or our life be altered or changed. And here we see this young man, vibrant to serve Christ, confident in eternity.

Before leaving, though, through his training, John met a wonderful young godly woman who also was excited to go to the mission field. So, John Patton married Marianne Robson. That was her name. And together, they are going to go to the mission field. So, way they are set to go is an island called Tana. And it was on April 16th, 1858, that John and Mary set sail for Australia to Aniwa, where that good work has been happening, to meet with John Inglis, who had been seeing people come to faith, raising up nationals, those nationals then wanted to help take the gospel to the other islands of their own people group. But every island and every tribe was kind of its own. But they still had the ability to go, and they had to relearn and tweak little parts of the language. But for the most part, these nationals wanted to go and help and serve and bring the gospel to all the islands. And so when they land, they get there, they meet John Inglis, they get a tour of Tana. And when he lands on Tana, this is what John Patton says: "Landing at Tana, we found the people there to be literally naked and painted. My heart was full of horror and pity. Had I given up so much beloved work and my dear friends in Glasgow to devote my life to these degraded creatures? Was it possible to teach them right from wrong, to bring them to Christ, even to civilize them?" But then he would remember what God was doing in Aniwa through John Inglis, and so his hope was instilled. And so here was step one for him and his new wife. We, we have to get a missionary home built on Tana to be able to live and function. So, they would stay with John while the house was being built. They would pay the locals to kind of build the house for them. And once the house is finished, they would then live in that house all by themselves, uh, with a national couple going with them.

So, let me give you a little snapshot of the people on the island of Tana. Their religion, their belief system, was completely a religion of service to fear. They would do whatever it takes to appease the spirits, to not inflict harm on them or any kind of calamity or any kind of revenge upon them. They had no idea of God, they had no idea of mercy, they had no idea of grace, and they for sure had no idea of Jesus Christ. Every village or every tribe had their own sacred man that would use witchcraft, worship spirits and demons, cast curses on people. The tribes would constantly be warring with one another. And what they would do, whether somebody would fall, uh, dead in a war, or they would create special occasions, they would take those dead and feast upon them after their deaths. Women were considered a slave to the man. John said when he first arrived at Tana, and him and his wife there, he would just see men club and beat their women for the smallest of all offenses. In one instance, a great chief fell ill. His people, wanting to see him get better, found three women from his tribe sacrificed them for his recovery. John writes, "How sad and degraded is the position of the woman where the teaching of Christ is unknown. It is the Christ of the Bible, His Spirit entering into humanity, that has lifted the woman and made her a helpmate and a friend of man, not a toy or a slave." When men would die in war, and their widow would be left behind, they would take the widow and kill the widow so the widow could then join the husband in the afterlife. After they put her to death, they would feast upon the body. Children weren't treated any better. In fact, John states in his book, in his autobiography that he wrote, by the way, he has three volumes that he wrote about, um, he shares three different instances that he was aware of in his time there where children were either killed or sacrificed upon their birth. The Tana people would constantly lie, they would constantly steal, they could not be trusted. So, this is the people that God called John and Mary to. Can you imagine being on the ground now by yourself, you and your young wife, a national couple, and this is the people that you're surrounded with? And let me just say, these people are not happy. They're not joyful. They're not like, "Come on in." They're not happy. They're there.

Why didn't they kill John Patton's wife immediately? Well, you ultimately got to say the hand of God. But they tried, and oh, did they try. Many times. Their house is built. John and Mary arrived. They stay permanently on Tana on November 5th of 1858. On February 12th, 1859, Mary gives birth to their son, Peter. How that went down, I have no clue. He didn't talk about that. Three days later, Mary gets sick, though. She catches a fever. Uh, there's a fever out there called, I think it's called Iau, it's kind of like malaria. It's a mosquito-driven fever as well. And so she went through weeks of battling this, and in a moment unexpected, she dies on March 3rd. Her last words were this: "Check out the heart of this woman. You must not think she's talking to John. You must not think that I regret coming here. If I had the same thing to do over again, I would do it with far more pleasure, yes, with all my heart." Peter, then the young boy, the son, comes down with a fever, and on March 20th, passes away. You're a new missionary in a new land with cannibals. Your wife just died. Your baby just died. And you get to dig the grave and bury your own wife and your own child. He says this: "Let those who have ever passed through any similar midnight darkness feel for me. As for others, it would be more than vain to even try to paint my sorrows. With ceaseless prayers and tears, I claim that land for God. But for Jesus and the fellowship He gave me there, I would have certainly gone mad and died beside that lonely grave." No wife, no kid. It's just you now to minister to this group of people.

John himself was struck by this fever 14 times in three months. In fact, at one time, Abraham, who was his national that was saved with him, that was there with his wife, said, "John, we got to get you off the lowest part of this island. We got to get you up on the hill more because that's where the trade winds are at, that will help you out, that'll make you feel better." And so John is trying to get up the hill to just get to the trade winds and feel better. And on that path, he looks at Abraham, goes, "I'm, I'm dying. I can't make it." And there he says his final goodbyes to Abraham and slips into unconsciousness, only to find himself waking up at a later time, Abraham tending to him and taking care of him. And eventually, he even gets revived. He serves on this island of Tana for four years under incredible circumstances, constant danger upon his life. Uh, the people of, of Tana were, were looking for any excuse to pin anything upon him and were constantly trying to kill him. And this is what I love about John Patton. It's almost like a movie in some points where he would just stand up in their face sometimes, sometimes he would be real gentle, sometimes he'd point a gun at him because he had a gun, sometimes his dogs would save him. But they were constantly, they, the Tana people were pointing muskets at him and spears at him. They would follow him around. And all the time, he never knew if his life was going to end at any moment, at any point of day. If the weather was bad, his fault. Uh, if rain didn't come and there was drought, his fault. If any tribe person within the tribe died, the missionary's fault. I mean, anything was being pegged upon John. And he constantly was living every day, every second of every day with death looming. Can you imagine his prayer life? He says, "My enemies seldom slacked their hateful design against me, however calm or baffled for the moment. At one time, a wild chief followed me around for four hours with a loaded musket." That the traders would come through these islands and trade kind of that Western stuff to these islanders for their sugarcane and food and fish of that nature. So, they did have muskets and guns at that time, often directed towards me. But God restrains his hand. He spoke kindly to him, and I attended and attended to my work as if he had not even been there, fully persuaded that my God had placed me there and would protect me until my allotted task was finished. Looking up in unceasing prayer to our Lord Jesus, I left in His hands, and I felt immortal until my work has been done. He says, "This life in such circumstances led me to cling very near to the Lord Jesus. I knew not for one brief hour when or how an attack might be made, and yet with my trembling hand clasped in the hand once nailed on Calvary and not swaying the scepter of the universe, calmness and peace and resignation abode in my soul." That's how he lived his life out there.

But they were still always coming after him. In fact, there was one tribesman who was getting sick, and he goes, "Bring me John Patton. Bring me John Patton." And John Patton walks into this little village, and like, everybody's gone. So, he goes into this house of this man named Ian. And Ian goes, "You know, pray for me. They called him Missy because he was a missionary. Pray for me, Missy." And so, as he gets closer to him to pray for him, he pulls out a dagger and puts it right on his chest and is about to thrust through, but didn't, didn't do it. And John just said, "I just stood there paralyzed. The only thing I could do was silently pray to my King." And after that awkward moment, the man finally took the knife and thrust it into the sugarcane next to him and said, "Get out of here." Can you imagine living like that? Four years, ups and downs. But what he would do is he would go into these villages with these nationals and proclaim the gospel. But how is he going to proclaim the gospel? He doesn't know a single word when he lands there. He doesn't know a single word. So, he's constantly learning. What does this mean? What does this mean? And he would write it down. And he began the hard task of putting that language onto paper because his goal was to one day give them a Bible of their very own in their very own language.

Let me read for you another example. And he writes, "One of the things I can't do today is give you the fullest picture of this. So, I really hope that there's some readers in here, and even if you're not a reader, that's okay. You can get the, like, the cliff notes version of his life here. This is for the non-readers, okay? Uh, but he does do a three-volume work on his life, and I, I totally recommend it, uh, to grab. This is out of print, uh, but you can get this on, you know, Amazon or something, and it's, it's only like three bucks, um, and it'll come right to you. Just type in John Patton, you'll see all the different ones. But let me just give you a little taste, a little, uh, flavor of what he was going through in and on this island. He said, 'The cruelty of the Tana knew no bounds. One woman pretended a great friendship to the wife of one of my teachers, even bringing dishes of food, and having gained some trust, she caught a poisonous little black fish, baked it into the meal, and the unrespecting teacher's wife, returning home, she boasted of her deed. And a friendly neighbor rushed to warn the victim, but arrived to learn that the fatal meal had been eaten. The teacher's wife, uh, was soon in great agony, another martyr for Christ.'" He says this, "Before daybreak one morning, I heard a shot, shot quickly discharged in the harbor. One of the teachers came running and cried, 'Missy, six or seven men have been shot this morning for a great feast. It is to reconcile tribes that have been at war and to allow the banished tribe to return to peace.' The leading men had agreed in a council upon this sacrifice, but the name of each victim was kept a secret until the last moment. So, before daybreak, the sacred, the sacred men allocated a murderer to the door of each house where the victim slept. When the signal shot was fired, the murderers would then rush through the doors shouting and clubbing to death the doomed ones who tried to escape. Their bodies were then hung by their hands on a sacred tree as an offering to the gods. Taken down, they were then carried ceremoniously onto the shore near my house. I was told that my teachers and I were designated victims for the same feast. And sure enough, we spied a band of armed men coming towards us. The teachers, their wives, and I all locked ourselves into the mission home, cut off from all human hope. We prayed to our dear Lord Jesus either to protect us or to take us to glory. That time, under God, may have held back, but the thought of using weapons, 'cause he had a gun, if they break in, the thought of using weapons did not enter our souls. Even in this awful time, I had not gone to save. I have gone to save. I have not gone to destroy. It would be easier for me at any time to die than to kill one of them." Toward sundown, constrained by the invisible one, they withdrew from our mission house and left us once more in peace. They bore away the slain to be cooked and distributed among the tribes and eaten in their feast of reconciliation, a covenant sealed in blood and soon to be buried in blood again. That's life on Tana.

It got so bad at one point that they go to chase John off the island. And he finally comes to a place where he realizes, "If I don't go, everything's going to be gone and destroyed." They stole, they looted his house, and he's on the run, and he knows he's running for his life. And he did not choose to stay in that moment. He chose to run to get to the harbor to find safe passage out into the ocean to hopefully, Lord willing, find a boat that could pick him up. Conscious that I had come to the last inch of my life, as he's running away and people are happening him, "I left all the results in the hand of my only Lord and all the criticism of his un-tiring judgment." He leaves the island after four years. Not a whole lot of fruit, maybe some people made professions of faith, but when they made a profession of faith, their lifestyle would go back into this evilness and this wickedness. So, he could never really tell. He just knew that as he was ministering to the people, sharing the gospel with them, learning their language, helping them, treating to their women, helping them not treat women the way they were, helping them understand God, he didn't see this great movement of God in his time there on Tana, the kind of fruit that you and I would want to see or think about from a missionary. And so he gets to Australia. And while he's in Australia, he escapes. When he gets to Australia, he just wants to go around to churches and tell the story of the people there in Tana in these islands and to raise up support to help their Day Spring missionary ship be able to bring supplies to all these islands. And so he's going from church to church. And once people hear John speak and hear his experiences, they want him. So, he starts speaking, and he's even using the, the children. Me, the children are raising funds to pay for this Day Spring. And so the missionary agency that he's working for is like, "Wow, this guy is a, this guy is helping produce resources and he's good at it. He's so good at it. Let's send him back home to Glasgow. We need him to go back and bring some more missionaries with him to come back home." So, against his wishes, he goes back home. And he writes this: "There, I had a heavenly welcome from my saintly parents, accompanied by many fast-falling tears. Only five brief years had now elapsed since I had left their sanctuary with my young bride. Now that Grace and Tana held my wife and my son locked in each other's embrace until resurrection day." Just as warm, but terribly agonizing was my reception by my bride's parents. A few days later, their hearts broken, they never fully recovered.

So, in 1864, now as he's back home, training up missionaries, getting resources, his heart is to go back to Tana. And that's where he wants to go. But while he's there at home, he meets another phenomenal young lady named Margaret Whitecross, and her heart stirred with a yearning to also teach those sitting in darkness. Her brother had died young as a missionary, her sister and her brother-in-law were missionaries. And so in 1864, John Patton marries for the second time. They eventually have two daughters and eight sons. And he says this, because they know together now they're going back into this mission field, he says, "We dedicate our children to His service with the hope that He may use every one of them in spreading the gospel through the whole lost world." I love that. I love that because I don't hear that from parents anymore. And I even have to challenge myself with my own kids. Is, is, is, is that where I'm at? Can I say that? Can I pray that prayer? Do I believe it? They dedicated their children to His service with the hope that He may use every one of them to spreading the gospel throughout the lost world. We have lots of ambitions for our kids, right? And lots of ambitions even for our grandkids in here. How come this is not the top one? Even agony still hits them as they had these kids. They did lose one, John and Margaret, one son died at two and a half while they were back in Vanuatu, and they had another son die in infancy. So, they still had many hardships as they were doing their mission work. But eventually, they get there, newly married couple, and John is ready to go back into Tana with his new wife. But his mission group says, "You, we're not, we're not going to let you go." And he said, "This is probably one of the most bitter trials of my life." "We don't want you to go to Tana. We're going to want you to go to Aniwa, which was a much smaller island, but it was the neighboring island to Tana." John was very familiar with it because the people of Tana would take their boats and row across the ocean and go, uh, Aniwa and go into Tana to get supplies and food. This was such a small island, they didn't have the resources that Tana had. So, he was familiar in his four years there with the people of Aniwa. So, that's where they were sent, Aniwa.

And when they arrive there, the people, when he arrives, said this, "We kill and we drove all the missionaries away. We plunder your houses and we rob you. And if we had been treated like that, nothing could make us return. But you come back in a beautiful new ship with more and more missionaries. If your God makes you do that, we yet may worship Him too." I mean, many of us, we would have tapped out when our wife passed away, right? Or when our child passed away, or especially after four years of all that he experienced, we'd be done. But these, these Christians back then, it's incredible. They kept sharing the love of Christ. Nothing would stop them. And they would keep going back, knowing that even it could take their lives. And guess what? That love is now breaking down the hearts of these most hardened people. Now, John's a little bit more familiar. I'm not going to build my house on the low level on Aniwa. I want to build it up on the high level. So, let me go to these, uh, the chief tribe, right? And the chief of the tribe, I need to find a high spot. They say, "We got a high spot for you. We'll sell it to you where you can build your house." He's excavating it. He's finding all these bones everywhere. He goes, "What's the deal with these bones?" They go, "You know, we don't eat the bones here on this island." So, he cleans off the bones and he starts to build his home. Home. And he plants his banana trees. And he's constantly living there. And, and, and it was after months he found out from the chief. And the chief said, "You know, when you came here, we purposely put you on that high spot. That is our most sacred spot on the island where we do all of our sacrifices. And we knew if we would put you there, that our gods would kill you. And if you grew food on there, the minute you would eat that food, you would die." But you're not dead. You're still here. How is this possible? This chief said, "How is it possible that you're still alive after you desecrated our holy ground?" And the chief said to him, "Our gods then must not be true. Your Jehovah must be stronger than the gods of Aniwa." And this chief of this tribe gives his life to Christ.

So, what is, uh, John and Margaret doing? They are teaching them to read. They are translating and printing and expounding the scriptures. They created an orphanage. They took care of their medical needs. John says that one of the biggest things that happened on Aniwa that he can never do in Tana was his wife was able to sing praises in their native tongue because she would sit and play, and the women and the children would come out, and they would sit and listen. And eventually, the chiefs would come out and want to listen. But he said it was the sinking of the well that broke the back of the dark religion. They didn't have water supply there. They had, they had a trust on rain. And it's a very small island. And so John just got in his mind like, you know, back in Scotland, we have wells. So, why not let me give it a go? I know I got to get about 30 feet down, and I'm going to go for it. But he kept thinking his mind like, "I'm on an island. And as soon as I dig 30 feet down, what am I kind of water am I going to get here? I'm going to get saltwater." But he was resolute in it, and he really felt like God was leading him. So, he starts digging this well. And as he's digging the well, the people are going, "What are you doing? You're gone insane. This is, this is what our people do when they know they're about to die, they dig their own grave." And they're thinking, "John, you're digging your own grave." He digs down five feet, he digs down seven feet. Eventually, John's like, "Man, this is hard work. Let me hire some of the locals with fishing hooks and stuff." And he got them digging. And they said, "Yeah, we'll do it, but we don't understand." He kept digging, and they kept digging. And he kept digging. Next day, he goes to sleep, wakes up, it caved in. They're like, "See, Missy, what are you doing?" He said, "Listen, it's my fault that caved in. I didn't build it structure up." They dig that back out, and they keep digging, and they keep digging to sinking this well. Let me give you his words here, uh, as he's digging this well, because everybody thinks he's gone looney tune. And he's just going, "God, can you help me? Can you help me?" "No, Missy," this is the chief now talking to him, "because he's going, 'I think Jehovah God will bring the rain from heaven here tomorrow in this hole.'" Because they hit the 30 feet. Says, "No, Missy, you will never see rain coming up from the earth. We are wondering what it is to be at the end of this mad work of yours. We expect daily, if you do reach water, you'll see you'll drop through it and drop through the sea, then the sharks will eat you." That's what they were thinking. So, he says this, "John Patton, come tomorrow, I answered, and I will hope and I will believe that Jehovah God will send rainwater up through the earth." And at that moment, I knew I was risking much and perhaps incurring sorrowful consequences if no water were given. Yet, I had faith that the Lord was leading me, and I knew that I sought His glory, not my own. The next morning, I went down again at daybreak and sank a narrow hole in the center about two more feet deep. Perspiration broke all over me with uncontrollable excitement. I trembled through every limb as water rushed up and began to fill the hole. Muddy as it was, I eagerly tasted it, and the little tin cup dropped from my hand with sheer joy. Water, fresh water, living water. After.

After a few moments, when I had the praise of the Lord and my excitement was a little calmed, the mud had greatly settled. I filled up a jug, which I had taken down empty in the sight of them all, and ascended to the top. I called for them to come and see the rain that Jehovah God had given to us through the well. They crowded around me and gazed at the jug with a superstitious fear.

The old Chief shook it to see if it would spill. He touched it to see if it felt like water. He tasted it and, rolling around in his mouth with joy for a moment, he swallowed it and shouted, "Rain! Yes, rain! But Missy, how did you get it?" "Jehovah, my God, gave it out of this earth in answer to our labors and to our prayers." "Missy, wonderful, wonderful is the work of your Jehovah God! No god of Ana has ever helped us in this way, Missy." And he paused, "Will it always rain up through the earth, or will it come and go like the rain from the clouds?" I told him that I believed it would always be there as a gift from Jehovah. "Missy," he went on, "you and your family, though you're going to drink it all, will you give some to us?" "You and all your people, and all the people on this island may come here and drink and carry away much of it as you wish. The more of it we can use, the fresher it will be." "That is the way with many of our Jehovah's best gifts."

From that moment on, the gospel spread. By the end of his 41 years ministering on this island, him and his wife, they told, saw the entire island of Ana come to faith in Jesus Christ. Margaret dies in 1905, and John Patton dies at 81. And John Patton, uh, dies in 1907 at the age of 83. And towards the end of his life, as John's continuing to do this ministry, he eventually prints the whole New Testament in their language. He teaches them to read, and they have the Word of God there. Uh, he would travel back to London. He would even travel to America. He spoke to two of our US presidents who were helping him get the trade routes freed up so they wouldn't come, the traders wouldn't come to these islands with alcohol and muskets and drum up war and violence. God used John Patton's life in a mighty, mighty way, but it was all laid by the blood of martyrs before him who didn't have a whole lifetime to do a whole lot.

So, what can we take away from his life? There's a couple of things that I was thinking about that I think play into what we're going through as a church right now in this season. The first takeaway: the gospel. The gospel drastically changed John Patton. He knew the gospel, and the gospel was the motivation of his life. He knew eternity was on the line. He knew souls had two destinations: either heaven and eternity with Jesus Christ, or hell. His theology was so good and so strong that he knew that even the people in the most remote parts of the earth still stand convicted according to the scriptures. So unless somebody would go there with the gospel, they would go to an eternity without Christ. It drove him to go there. It didn't keep him. In fact, I'll say a scary word, but John Patton was a Calvinist. He was part of a Reformed Presbyterian church, but it was his Calvinism which drove him into the mission field because he knew that there were lost people out there that needed the gospel.

I'm reminded of Joshua 1:9 when I think of John Patton. "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." That promise is for you and I as well. And wherever we do, and whatever circumstance hits our life, whatever danger we think we could be walking into by living our lives fully for Christ, do we not know and do we not understand that we are to not be frightened, but we are called to be men and women to be strong and courageous? Did John Patton have fears? Did he worry? Did he pray? Did he have anxiety? Did he have sleepless nights? 100%. But he had faith in this Christ, and he had a true understanding of the true gospel. And when you have an understanding of the true gospel, and the Lord changes you, you're just driven. You're just driven.

Now, not all of us are going to be called to go to the cannibals. And you might be sitting here and go, "There's not even people like that on this earth anymore." I guarantee you, there is. There absolutely is. John Chau, two years ago, a young man out of Canada, I forgot where he's going, in a place in India. Lands there, they kill him instantly. Absolutely. He's still alive today in some parts of this world. So although you might not be called to that specific mission, we're all called to the mission that we began today's message with, which is the Great Commission.

See, one of the things I loved about John Patton is it wasn't just about being a foreign missionary. That he did mission work in his own hometown because he knew souls were on the line, and he knew it was important for him to live out his faith amongst his own people. And in doing so, God even called him to the foreign mission field. So we can't be a people that reserve mission work to the professionals to go overseas and do mission work. Anybody who's a saint in Christ is a sent one, is a missionary. And we're called to win lost souls here and now. And that's why God puts them all over your life. They're everywhere. And you're going to go through different trials and struggles and temptations, anxieties, and worries. But will you be faithful to the gospel? And I guess the biggest takeaway is, has the gospel really changed you? Because if the gospel's really changed you, how can we sit on such a great prize as this man called Jesus Christ and not witness and share him with others so that they could receive salvation? So that's one takeaway.

The second takeaway was prayer. Because when you look at a guy like John Patton, I immediately go, "What? What produces a guy like this? Is this just an anomaly? Like, what was it like for John? Is that those 16-hour hard days?" So if I get my kids to work hard for 16 hours a day making clothes, like, is this the kind of... yeah, look at shaking his head. Okay, so that's not it. So what created this guy like John Patton? Obviously, the Holy Spirit's doing this work in him, right? But there's some things that if you were to pick up his autobiography, this alone is worth the price of the book, and you should absolutely, 100% buy. And even if you didn't read anything else of his life, you read just the beginning chapters of his life, for that's where he talks about his parents, specifically his father as well. Remember that small closet in the middle? That was Dad's prayer room. That's where his father would go for prayer as a rule. After every meal, 11 children knew, and they knew that when Dad entered that, something profound was happening. And it impacted John Patton immensely. And he says, "Through everything else in religion, we, by some unthinkable catastrophe, to be swept out of memory, blotted from my understanding, my soul would wander back to those early scenes and shut itself up once again in the sanctuary closet, and hearing those still echoes and those cries to God would hurl back all doubt and vicious appeal." My dad walked with God, why not I? "How much my father's prayers at this time impress me, I can never explain, nor could any stranger understand. But when on his knees, and all of us kneeling around him in family worship, he poured out his whole soul with tears for the conversion of the heathen world and to the services of Jesus, and for every personal and domestic need, we all felt as if in the presence of the living Savior, and we learned to know and to love him as our divine friend."

One of the best scenes that captures the depth of the love that John and his father had and the power of the impact of his and his mom as well and his father, the impact was when he had to go and leave for Glasgow when he first became that missionary from his hometown. And he says that was, we had to walk to the train station. It was a 40-mile hike. John Patton writes this. He goes, "My dear father walked with me the first six miles of the way. His counsels and his tears and heavenly conversation on the parting journey are fresh in my heart as if it had been yesterday, and tears are on my cheek as I freely now write about them. And whenever my memory steals me away to that scene, the tears come." For the last half mile or so, I walked on together in almost unbroken silence. My father was often, his custom was, carrying his hat in his hand while his long flowing yellow hair, then yellow but later white as snow, streamed like a girl's down his shoulders. His lips kept moving in silent prayers, and his tears fell fast. When our eyes met each other in looks for which all speech was vain, we halted on reach of the appointed parting place. He grasped my hand firmly, and in a minute of silence, and solemnly and affectionately said, "God bless you, my son. Your father's God will prosper you and keep you from evil." Unable to say anymore, his lips kept moving in silent prayer and tears. We embraced and parted. I ran off as fast as I could, and when I was about to turn the corner of the road to see if he would lose sight of me, I looked back to see him standing up with his head still uncovered where I left him, gazing for me to wave his hat, which he did. I then rounded the corner and out of sight. In an instant, my heart burst forward, and I just started weeping. I eventually ran up a dyke looking for him, and he did not see me, but after he gazed eagerly in my direction for a while, he got down, set his face toward home, and began to return, his head still uncovered, and his heart, I felt for sure, still rising in prayers. I watched through blinding tears till his form warm faded from my gaze, and then hastening on my way, vowed deeply, "This is a word that'll strike us all, by the help of God, to live and act so as to never grieve or dishonor such a father and a mother as he had given me."

This is the impact of a mother and a father who love Jesus Christ and are intentional in discipling their kids. I think a lot of us, for parents, and even parents watching here, there might be these overt dreams to do so much more in the body of Christ, but I just want to commend you right now. There's no ministry that is more important than your own kids. And it's not just a teaching ministry, it's a lifestyle ministry. They see it all. And the prayer life of mom and dad for John Patton, so changed him. This is the kind of place where John grew up in and under. And I know for a lot of us, we go, "I just missed the mark. I'm so far from being there." Right? I get it, and I feel the same way. But it doesn't have to remain that way. Right? Those of us who are still raising up young kids, there's nothing more important. If you're older in life and you realize failures in this area, just distraction, just work and business, and I didn't get the time to invest in my kids in the way I should have. I didn't really teach them to understand who this God was fully. Didn't teach them good theology. Didn't teach them how to approach their Bible. Didn't teach them prayer the way I want to. Didn't teach them how to praise God. Didn't spend the time I need to spend with them. And now they're grown up. Now they're just older. It's still never too late. You still hold the biggest influence in your kids's life. And might I add, start as grandparents, if that's the case. And if that's not the case, you can take all the things that you've learned from those hardships and potential failures and help raise up the next generation of young families to not repeat the same pattern. You're useful, be used. But prayer, it was all about prayer. And I was excited to do John Patton for our missionary look because starting next week, we're going to go into our prayer sermon series. I guarantee you, all of us, our lives will be forever changed when we get a full scope of what God is trying to do in and through prayer.

So, the gospel, prayer, the church. See, John was a part of a strong, healthy, biblical church. Not only was it a strong, healthy, biblical church, it was a church that was passionate about missions. He said that God was doing this thing in Scotland where the churches that had passion for missions and good theology, they never had anything to worry about, no debt, no worry about buildings, nothing like that. It seemed like God was just pouring in the funnel of blessings because these became houses where they trained up and raised people to send them out. They didn't train up and raise them to become bigger, bigger, and bigger, bigger, but they trained them up, they discipled them to send them out. And his church was mission-minded. And I think of where we're going now in the future, and we're seeing a trend that we've always, in a sense, Bethel has been mission-minded, but we are doubling down, if not anything, right? I mean, we have in the audience today a missionary to the Middle East for 30 plus years. We have missionaries that are living on our campus right now that came from India. We have the head of a mission organization here at Bethel with Whitefields. We're coming to a place where we're going to take this Great Commission seriously. It's not going to be a tagline. It's not going to be a picture on the wall. It'll be the reality of what we do. And I hope and I pray that every kid that is a part of here, and every family as kids are raising up, that these kids will one day have the heart that John had for his kids. Let them be stewards of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Nothing more important. The church was healthy. And I think of this in Acts 28. He's talking to elders here, but listen to this scripture verse. "Pay attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood." What is the most important thing that we as believers in Christ can be a part of together? It's the thing that God purchased with his very own blood: the church. The church. And we're in a time with COVID where church is somehow being minimized to watching a video on TV. It's this, not church.

Fourth, discipleship. And it comes back to the parents. It comes back to John Patton's parents. And starting in his teens until he finally passed away, what you see from John Patton's life, from the example of his parents to him, was he was always discipling somebody. And God just saw it so fit to make him a tremendous disciple because there was always hundreds of people around him that he was discipling and pouring into and building into. If we're not being discipled, we should be discipling somebody else, or doing both at the same time, being discipled as well as discipling others. And here's probably one of the greatest failures within the American church: discipleship is void in the church. Turn it into a production where you sit and listen and maybe sing. But God has called us to this Great Commission to teach them to observe all that he has commanded. So we are called to disciple all of us. No one's off the hook here in Christ. But it's really not a hook, it's the greatest joy of life to disciple somebody and to train them and raise them up in the Lord Jesus Christ. We talked last week about experiencing joy in Christ. How can we experience this overflowing joy of Christ? It's by being faithful and obedient to him. How do we become faithful and obedient to him? We take his word and we apply it. And he calls you and I to disciple others. It doesn't matter how far you are in your spiritual journey, there's always somebody that you can connect with and disciple. And for those of you that have families and you're raising up young kids right now, resist the temptation. Just start with the family. Take the pressure off yourself. Your home is critical and most important. For those of you where the kids are out, there should be two, three, four, five, six people going, "The way you live your faith, I want to know this Jesus." Discipleship. Matthew 28, Great Commission.

And the last takeaway that we can take from John Patton's life is his heart for evangelism. Right? This is pretty self-explanatory from all that I just kind of read and we went through. Um, but like I said before, this isn't just the foreign mission field, it's our mission field. And I don't know if you've ever noticed when you drive out of this parking lot, there's a little sign there. Everybody noticed that? What that sign says? What does it say? "You're entering into your mission field." Yeah, you're all missionaries in Christ. We're all missionaries.