LOCAL AND DATE: Tatabanya - Hungry, May 24th, 2009.

BIBLICAL TEXT: Romans 1.14

INTRODUCTION:
“I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to wise and to unwise. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.” Debt is a chronicle infirmity in a modern society. 95 per cent of United State population is in debt. The houses, the cars, the clothes, the furniture and apparels don’t belong to us anymore. They belong to the banks! And after the great recession faced by the world’s most powerful economy, most of us became poor and frustrated! This kind of debts brought to us frustration, desperation and a sense of ruin!

But, I am so glad that Paul wasn’t talking about that kind of indebtedness, he was talking and teaching us about the spiritual indebtedness that we have toward of human kind! Sharing the Gospel is an honor, it’s an obligation, and it’s a matter of eternal future of mankind! I am a debtor!

OUTLINE:
1. Be a debtor to the Greeks - riches is an easy task, but dangerous: easy for the comfort of sharing the Word, but dangerous for the compromise lying on our doorsteps! We cannot compromise the message! (2 Tm 4.1) – “I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.”

2. Be a debtor to the barbarians - poor is also an easy, but painful task: easy by the emotion that the Gospel is received, but painful because they need more than the Word, they need food, clothes and medicine as well! (James 2:14-17) – “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

CONCLUSION:
In 1972 I was visiting a brother in Fort Worth, Texas, very rich, a millionaire! I was on my way to visit the Head Quarter of our Assemblies of God, in Springfield, Missouri, along with Missionary Bernard Johnson and pastor Geziel Gomes. By suggestion of Pastor Johnson we made a stop by this brother’s airfield. After have a snack, he asked me which plane I would like to flight to my final destination. I chose the white one, and said to myself: “how is so comfortable to evangelize a wealthy person”!

But I was also delighted for the wonderful and powerful seminars that the Almighty God gave us in Mozambique, in 1995. During these months the Sepoangol World Ministries (an outreach of the Bethany Pentecostal Church aiming to train Portuguese, Spanish and French speaking people), reached the ten provinces of the country, teaching 45 subjects in 1085 hours of class for 225 pastors, evangelists and lay-workers from 19 denominational backgrounds. The 62 poison serpents that we killed in the wild camp ground, the malaria and meningitis that some caught, sure could not stop the male and female, old and young students to be graduated!

PREACHER:
Rev. Eronides DaSilva, Senior Pastor