This past Sunday I kicked-off our church's Missions Emphasis month with a message entitled, "Jesus, the Gospel, and Global Missions." My aim in the message was to point out from the Word the overwhelming truth that God's activity in the world is about calling out a redeemed people from all the Nations. My focus was to exposit & connect three primary passages to show God's people that the Story-line of the Bible is really God glorifying Himself through a redeemed people who see and savor Jesus Christ in and through the gospel.
The 3 texts I chose were Genesis 12:1-3, Matthew 28:18-20, and Revelation 5:9-10. Taking a bird's-eye view, these passages show three important elements of God's plan to be glorified through the Nations by Jesus Christ and the gospel:
God's Promise
In Genesis 12, we find God's sovereign covenant with Abram. Here, God intervenes in human history with the promise that "in you all the families of the earth will be blessed" (v.3). The astonishing point about this passage is that in one sentence, God reveals, in short-hand form, His plan for the world. Notice that "in you" is a reference to Christ (cf. Gal. 3:16), "shall be blessed" is a reference to the gospel (cf. Gal. 3:8), and "all the families of the earth" is an obvious reference to global missions. So it is clear that the subsequent unfolding of redemptive history as it relates to this Abrahamic Covenant is about Christ, the gospel, and global missions.
In Genesis 12, we find God's sovereign covenant with Abram. Here, God intervenes in human history with the promise that "in you all the families of the earth will be blessed" (v.3). The astonishing point about this passage is that in one sentence, God reveals, in short-hand form, His plan for the world. Notice that "in you" is a reference to Christ (cf. Gal. 3:16), "shall be blessed" is a reference to the gospel (cf. Gal. 3:8), and "all the families of the earth" is an obvious reference to global missions. So it is clear that the subsequent unfolding of redemptive history as it relates to this Abrahamic Covenant is about Christ, the gospel, and global missions.
Our Performance
That led us to Matthew 28, where the risen Jesus commissions His disciples to carry out God's promise of Global Missions by going into all the world to make disciples of the Nations. Having accomplished redemption through His life and death on the Cross, Jesus has now received resurrected authority over every square inch of the universe, enabling Him as the King to send out His subjects to providentially perform God's plan to call a people unto Himself in connection with faith in Christ as preached through the gospel. What a privilege to be able to participate in the unfolding of God's plan for the world.
Heaven's Picture
And lest God's people become overwhelmed with the task of reaching the world for Christ's sake, we've been given the marvelous picture of the finished product in the book of Revelation chapter 5. Here is the great company of redeemed saints, which no man can number, taken from "every tribe and tongue and people and nation" (v. 9, cf. 7:9-10). The picture is clear. God's promise will be fulfilled. His people will perform the task. There will be a new humanity from every Nation that will worship God and Jesus Christ throughout eternity having believed the gospel and tasted of the goodness of the Lord.
And so, I challenged our congregation to wholeheartedly embrace what God is doing in this world. His heart is Global Missions, and as biblical Christians our hearts must beat with the same passion to reach the Nations with the saving gospel of the risen Christ so that God will be glorified forever. Every Christian, every local church, big or small, should be praying regularly, giving sacrificially, and planning strategically in order to maximize our joy in seeing the heart of God envelop the Nations through His Son Jesus Christ as freely offered in the gospel.
