D’kar February 2024: Referent Hendrik Du Plessis.
By the grace of the Lord, things are going well with us in D’kar. We are preparing for the Easter events soon, 29 – 31 March. Our elders are busy with home visits in their respective wards after which we will convene a meeting. We are thinking of celebrating communion during the Easter weekend.
During these visits with a view to communion, particular attention is paid to the church attendance of our members, for you cannot have a need for the holy communion if you otherwise do not have a need for the Lord of the communion. You cannot hardly ever come to church and then claim that you have a need for the sacraments. How can you have a need for the sacraments if you don’t have a need for the Word of the Lord that should educate you to that end?
Throughout the year each member is marked absent or present on Sundays by their ward elder. The result is that when the elder goes to visit someone, he has a complete record of his members church attendance – not only for the year, but also for the previous years. Thus people are placed under discipline and even cut off from the church. It is then clearly stated to them that it is they themselves who cut themselves off from the community of believers. Hebrews 10:25 makes it so clear that it all starts with the habit of no longer meet together with the community of believers. It says: “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”
In the Naro Bushman language it means: The Lord is my Sheppard.
When you skip one Sunday, you feel guilty and then decide to go to church again the following Sunday. Then you skip another Sunday again and feel guilty again, but maybe not as guilty as the last time, and slowly but surely you fall into the habit of not attending the services from time to time. Later, you can stay away for weeks or even months without feeling guilty. Your conscience is systematically dulled. It then becomes, as Hebrews 10 says, the habit of no longer coming to the mutual gatherings of the believers.
You are then on your own and defenceless against the attacks of the devil. Believers need each other to constantly stir up one another and encourage each other. The Lord Jesus did not go to look for Thomas where he was sitting at his house. No, Thomas first had to come back again to the community of believers. Only then could he touch the Lord Jesus and call Him, “my Lord and my God”.
Hebrews 10 from verse 26 then goes on and warns us against wilfully continuing to sin: “26For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.”
To explain our defenselessness against the power of the devil and how we need each other in the fight, I always use the example of what happened to me years ago during a morning service on the farms. In my previous congregation, Krokodilrivier, we used to hold services for the workers at the farmers in the mornings. Before they started working, I discussed a passage from the Bible with them. Fifty to a hundred, depending on how many people work for the farmer then sit in front of me and listen to the preaching of the Word.
One morning, during the service, there were two large boer bull dogs who were watching the workers the whole time and growled at them, but who did not have the courage to attack the crowd. I spoke about the believer’s defenselessness and how dangerous it is to want to practice your faith without the support of fellow believers, and that the devil targets such defenseless people like a roaring lion. A lion usually singles out a buffalo for himself to move out of the herd. He does not attack him in the herd, because then the other buffaloes would come to his rescue. No, he usually singles out the weak who can’t keep up with the herd and jumps to one side. So the big secret is, stay in the herd. That is also true to us as believers, we have to stay together. Do not leave or despise the community of believers. There we watch over each other, we protect each other in prayer and supplication before the Lord and we exhort each other.
I was still busy explaining how vulnerable the buffalo is without the herd and that the lions are waiting for one of the buffaloes to leave the herd, when all of a sudden I heard a loud scream and a growl. One of the workers decided to leave the crowd for some reason. The moment he left the group, those furious dogs pounced on him. The others just had to stop and yell at the dogs or they would have bitten him. The dogs did not have the courage to attack him while he was still in the group, but when he moved outside the group alone, they were ready to attack. The application of what I had just shared with them then played out right there and then before their eyes.
New members
By the grace of the Lord, we gained new members and they were accepted into our congregation. These are two Afrikaans speaking wards, Gantsi and Maun, which fell under the Reformed church Gobabis in Namibia. In the past, Gobabis minister came to visit them and served them with the Word of the Lord and the holy sacraments. With time, it became more and more difficult for Gobabis to continue with their ministry here. Due to their own reasons, the Reformed church Gobabis informed the wards in Botswana that they will no longer continue ministering them. Some of the members then decided on their own free will to join us, the Reformed church D’kar, for which we are very grateful. We now see them as part of our congregation with their respective gifts that the Lord has given to his church here. There are 12 members in the Maun ward and 14 in the Gantsi ward. We have already visited the Maun ward in February and we baptized a covenant child.
To conclude
When reading Mark 5, one realizes once again what makes the church of the Lord grow, and how important the individual is who really came in contact with the Lord Jesus in his or her life. Such a person was the possessed of Gadara. After he was healed and freed from thousands of demons he had only one desire and that was to stay with the Lord Jesus. Such a person is worth more than ten thousand sitting members with their arms folded, only attending the church services out of habit and nothing more. The Lord Jesus did not want to comply with his request, but sent him out as a missionary to his own people to tell them what the Lord had done for him. Normally, the Lord Jesus said to people, “follow me”, but to this man He said, “go”. Who can strive for the kingdom of God with more zeal than this man. Especially when you stand in his shoes and you think that only yesterday you wandered naked and screaming among the graves with the terror and oppression of thousands of demons choking your soul. You cannot explain the stress to anyone. This in itself is only a small foretaste of the eternal hell that lies ahead of you where you will come in contact with millions, but now you are so free, so free, so redeemed, so relieved and enlightened that words cannot describe it. Who can carry the Gospel out better than him. It was a pagan area, predominantly Greek and Roman and part of the ten towns or cities (Dekapolis), hence the fact that they farmed with pigs, which was taboo for a Jew at that time. After the damage of 2000 pigs that fell from the cliff into the sea, these pagans ask Him to leave their territory, which the Lord Jesus and his disciples then did, but the demon possessed guy had to stay behind to go in 10 towns or cities to tell the people what the Lord Jesus had done for him. If the devil thought that the Lord Jesus had lost this round, he was in for a big surprise, because in the next chapter, Mark 6 from verse 53, the Lord Jesus and his disciples returned to that area again. When He set foot there, thousands of people came to meet Him with their sick. From verse 53 it says: “53When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored to the shore. 54And when they got out of the boat, the people immediately recognized him 55and ran about the whole region and began to bring the sick people on their beds to wherever they heard he was. 56And wherever he came, in villages, cities, or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment. And as many as touched it were made well.”
All this was the work of one possessed person who came into contact with the Lord Jesus, for whom the Lord Jesus freed. He was the first missionary in that area and the best candidate for that position. He didn’t go back just to be a member. No, he went back as someone who has something to tell, and you can only be someone like him if the Lord Jesus has become a reality in your life and you realize what you have been saved from. You are freed and everyone should know it. Not only this possesed but also David cried it out in Psalm 66:16: “Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for my soul.” Without such a confession, the Gospel is at best only a course or catechism material.
In the mission field we are not looking for the masses in the first place, but for the individuals. Yes, those individuals will go to the masses with the convincing salvation message of our Lord Jesus Christ. They will go and tell, to use David’s words, “what He has done for my soul.”
Your brother in Christ,
Hendrik du Plessis