Brothers and Sisters, Thank you all for checking out my blog. As most of you know, Lauren and I are praying through going overseas to work among an unreached people group in North Africa. We recently returned from a vision trip and I have posted the pictures on the previous post. Check them out.
I want to take a second and preface this post by saying that I have not written these hard truths below for the sake of being hard, but for the fact that a large majority of the "churched" culture today overlooks what Jesus is saying. I am writing this to make clear what has been watered down in Americanized Church culture. Please pray through these biblical truths and if I am wrong or misinterpreted the text, you have full permission to call me out. But if what I am saying is truth, there must be a change in the way we live.
In the first post I discussed how Jesus has called many to
follow him even if it costs you everything. Jesus tells us that if we do not
follow Him we are not worthy of Him. If
we truly believe the words of our risen Savior then we must obey. There is so much hope and reward in what
Jesus is calling us to. We must
understand the call so that we may obediently follow. Jesus descended from His royal throne to come down to a
depraved lost world, lived an perfect life by displaying His Father’s will, gave
up His own life as a ransom for all, gloriously rose from the dead, and came to
His disciples and said,
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given 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.” Matthew 28:18-19.
Earlier, in Matthew 24:14, Jesus also tells us,
“And this
gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a
testimony to all nations, and then… THE END WILL COME.”
What is Jesus saying
here? The text is clear, when the gospel
is proclaimed in all nations the end will come.
What are we waiting for? Revelation
7:9 even confirms the promise that Jesus is telling us,
“After this I looked,
and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from
all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the
Lamb…”
So we know that the gospel will be heard in every nation,
tribe, language, and people, and once this happens the end will come. At least that is what Jesus says right? The one who has all authority?
Now the meaning of nation, people, tribe, and language has been
difficult to define as borders and boundaries have changed over the years. Matthew Ladd said this “God alone knows the definition
of terms. I cannot precisely define who all the nations are, but I do not need
to know. I know only one thing: Christ has not yet returned; therefore, the
task is not yet done. When it is done, Christ will come. Our responsibility is
not to insist on defining the terms; our responsibility is to complete the
task. So long as Christ does not return, our work is undone. Let us get busy
and complete our mission.”
To really drive this point home, I think it would
be wise to see what the status of the church is today:
- World Population: 7 Billion
- Unreached
people: 2.89 Billion
*Unreached people groups: An unreached people group
(UPG) is a people group in which less than 2% of the population are Evangelical
Christians. Globally there are
approximately 6,400 UPGs.
- Unengaged
people: 117 Million
*Unengaged people groups: Unengaged people groups
have no coordinated evangelical Christian missionary presence among them. Unengaged people groups have never
heard the Gospel, or they may have been exposed to the Gospel in the past, but
have been forgotten and there is no church planting movement among them.
-
Missiologists say that about 90% of the US missionary work force is going to
parts of the world that are already considered “reached” with the gospel
leaving only 10% to minister among the 2.89 billion people that have never
heard the name of Jesus.
Let me give
you an illustration, If ten men are carrying a log – nine of them on the
little end and one at the heavy end- This is a reflection on the number of Christian workers in the US as
compared to those among Unreached peoples. You want to help lift? Which end will you lift on?
The northern part of Yemen has 8 million people.
That’s twice the population of the entire state of Alabama. Do you know how
many believers there are out of those 8 million people? 20 or 30. There are more believers in a Sunday School
class in your church than in all of northern Yemen.
Christians, what do we do with this? There are 2.89 Billion people headed toward
eternal damnation. It has been +2,000
years since Jesus sent us out and there are still 2.89 Billion people who have
never heard the gospel. Why?
“How then will they call on him in whom they
have not believed? And how are they to believe in him to 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
10:14-15a.
This whole process falls on
followers of Christ going to the harvest field and preaching the gospel.
Now the question is who will go tell the nations of the
glory of God because there is not one person in the world that needs Jesus
Christ less than you do.
William Booth proclaims, "Not
called!" did you say? "Not heard the call," I think you should
say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners
out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of
humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of
hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid
their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then
look Christ in the face - whose mercy you have professed to obey - and tell Him
whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to
publish His mercy to the world.”
Please do not
misunderstand me we need to have short-term, mid-term, and long-term missions, but there’s
no question at all that we see Timothy-type people in the NT and Paul-type people in
the NT. God calls Timothy-type people to stay in a church (among the reached)
and shepherd the body. God calls
Paul-type people to leave the reached and scatter to the unreached. And pastors, there are men and women in your
church whom God is calling to Paul-type ministry. Maybe not everybody, but some
of them. God is calling them to pack their bags and move overseas to spread the
gospel among unreached peoples.
Brothers and Sisters, this tasking
is indeed great. The God we serve is
infinitely greater and he is worthy of all 7 Billion peoples’ worship. This
task is dangerous and risky but Jesus does not call us to pick up our
mattresses but instead a cross. To die
is truly gain, because we will receive our full reward in Christ.
I will close the post with this story:
Romanian pastor Josef
Tson recounted a time he was being interrogated by
six men. He said to one of them:
What is taking place here is not an
encounter between you and me. This is an encounter between my God and me. . . .
My God is teaching me a lesson [through you]. I do not know what it is. Maybe
he wants to teach me several lessons. I only know, sirs, that you will do to me
only what God wants you to do—and you will not go one inch further—because you
are only an instrument of my God. Every day I saw those six pompous men as
nothing more than my Father’s puppets!
Tson
again:
During an early interrogation I had told
an officer who was threatening to kill me, “Sir, let me explain how I see this
issue. Your supreme weapon is killing. My supreme weapon is dying. Here is how
it works. You know that my sermons on tape have spread all over the country. If
you kill me, those sermons will be sprinkled with my blood. Everyone will know
I died for my preaching. And everyone who has a tape will pick it up and say,
‘I’d better listen again to what this man preached, because he really meant it;
he sealed it with his life.’ So, sir, my sermons will speak ten times louder
than before. I will actually rejoice in this supreme victory if you kill me.”
After I said this, the interrogator sent me home. Another officer who was
interrogating a pastor friend of mind told him, “We know that Mr. Tson would
love to be a martyr, but we are not that foolish to fulfill his wish.” I
stopped to consider the meaning of that statement. I remembered how for many
years, I had been afraid of dying. I had kept a low profile. Because I wanted
badly to live, I had wasted my life in inactivity. But now that I had placed my
life on the altar and decided I was ready to die for the Gospel, they were
telling me they would not kill me! I could go wherever I wanted in the country
and preach whatever I wanted, knowing I was safe. As long as I tried to save my
life, I was losing it. Now that I was willing to lose it, I found it.
If you want to dive a little deeper please take some time to watch this sermon:
Divine Sovereignty: The Fuel of Death Defying Missions (David Platt)
I love you all and
am encouraged to be walking through this life with you.
Urgent for Eternity,
Ryan
