Together On Mission

Romans 15:20-21

In Romans 15:20-21, Paul reveals to us his ministry philosophy for spreading the Gospel. He was called specifically to take this message to people (Gentiles) that had never known the “name” (15:20) of Jesus Christ. This does not mean that he never preached the Gospel where others had preached it before him. But, his primary focus (“aim”) was in opening new territories where he could spread the fame of Jesus Christ.

He notes two cities that marked the boundaries of his travels thus far in preaching Christ: Illyricum and Jerusalem. This was a territory of approximately 1400 miles that Paul had traversed in the course of fulfilling his calling. And, this wasn’t the end of what he hoped to do in reaching the unreached. He ultimately wanted to go to Spain (15:24, 28) to continue proclaiming Christ as Savior. Though we have no record in the book of Acts chronicling his travels to that region (Spain was the western limit of the Roman Empire and included all of the Iberian Peninsula), church tradition says he did, in fact, reach Spain after his first Roman imprisonment and possibly even went as far as Britain.

What we see in Paul’s words is that His unique calling was to take the Gospel to those that had little or no opportunity to hear it apart from his missionary endeavors. As was his custom, he usually travelled along main Roman roads (ex. Egnatian Way) to significant urban areas to win people to Christ and plant churches. Once people had been reached and churches organized, these new disciples of Christ assumed the responsibility of reaching outlying regions.

Paul explained his missionary efforts by referring to an Old Testament text (Isaiah 52:15) as support for the work he was doing among the Gentiles. This OT passage provided a clear foundation for his ministry philosophy and validated his efforts in reaching the Gentile world (those that did not “name” Christ). There is a good lesson for us to learn from Paul’s methods and that is to always base our major decisions on scriptures that affirm God’s will for our lives. Paul was not acting on a momentary whim or pragmatic speculation, but on a clearly defined purpose from God Himself.

Central to what Paul was doing in his missionary travels was preaching the Gospel of Christ and twice he mentions doing so (15:19, 20). There would need to be other aspects of the scripture explained so that new believers could grow in their faith. Nevertheless, Paul’s main objective was to proclaim the “Good News” about Jesus Christ. This serves as a reminder that at the heart of what we are to do as followers of Jesus is proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to do so “fully" (i.e., completely).

I thank God for those that are willing to be used by Him to plant churches in the United States. Even in our own region there are new church plants happening right now in local communities. It’s clear that there are areas, niche communities, and regions in the U.S. where the Gospel has yet to be heard and/or made available to those willing to listen. But, we desperately need some that will heed the call of God to take the Gospel to regions of the world where Christ is still unknown to most of the population that lives there.

Just to help you get a grasp of the desperate condition of the world we live in for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, consider these facts...

Let’s take the world’s population and shrink it down to a village of 100 people. By doing so, perhaps we can make sense of the dire needs that crush the global population. Hopefully, it will also move us to pray for people who, without Christ, have little hope, peace, joy, or opportunity for salvation.

In this village of 100 people, six of them (all U.S citizens) own 58% of the wealth. 74 of them own 39% of the wealth. And, 20 of them own the other 2%. If you have a bank account (with any amount of money in it) you are among the richest 30 people in this village. 18 people in this village struggle to live on $1 USD per day. 53 people in the village struggle to live on $2 USD per day. 20 people in the village are undernourished, 15 are overweight, and one will die of starvation by the end of the day. 20 people in this village have no clean drinking water. 56 of them have no access to sanitation, and 80 live in substandard housing. One person in the village has AIDS, and one has a university degree. Seven of them have computers, and 67 are completely illiterate. Sadly, 48 in this village cannot speak freely of their religious faith.

Another way to look at it...

• About 40 million people worldwide are living with the HIV virus...2/3 of them in Africa.
• There are more than 15 million children that have been left orphaned by the Aids epidemic.
• There are more than 35 million people that are right now displaced from their homes due to conflicts worldwide.
• Almost half the world lives on less than $3 per day.
• Of the 7 billion plus people on planet earth...more than 2 billion have NEVER (!!!) once heard the Gospel of Christ.

Now I ask you, where is the greatest need in the world and what are we going to do about it? Where are the pioneering missionaries like the Apostle Paul that say, “Let me go to the regions where no one else is preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ?”

One of my friends that took me under his wing during the very early days of my ministry was a man by the name of J.B. WIlliams. I loved to hear him preach because he was skilled in the original languages of scripture and always seemed to have a “nugget” of truth that you couldn’t get from just reading along the surface of the text. Dr. Williams had been a pioneer missionary to the Bariba tribe in Benin, West Africa. When he and his wife arrived there in 1946, they were greeted by thousands of pagan Bariba tribe members but only one known Christian. In Dr. Williams’ autobiography (God’s Leading Hand) he writes about the difficulties of adjusting to the Bariba culture, learning their language, and translating the Gospel of John into their language. After they left the field, he went on travelling the globe, raising funds for missionary endeavors and preaching to challenge God’s people to greater missionary endeavors.

Where are the J.B. WIlliams’ today that hear and answer the call to missions where people have rarely or never heard the name of Jesus?

This past Sunday evening our missionary guest shared about his call to Togo, West Africa, to serve as a church planter and medical doctor. In his presentation he shared a quote that caught my attention and I want to bring it to your attention again.

John Keith Falconer said, “I have but one candle of life to burn, and I would rather burn it out in a land filled with darkness than in a land flooded with light.”

Where is that willingness and openness among us to go on an adventure with God to the regions of the world where few, if any, have heard the Gospel?

The U.S. State Department presently lists a total of 194 countries, though that number reflects the political agenda of our nation. What if you had been born in one of those countries where poverty, oppression, war, disease, and famine prevailed? What if you were living in a place where there was no hope, no peace and no mention of the name of Jesus Christ? Wouldn’t you want someone to come and tell you the “Good News” about Him?

What if you lived where you didn’t have a Bible in your own language? According to the Wycliffe Bible Translators, about 98 million people speak languages where there is no known Scripture, and a further 81 million speak languages which need additional Bible translation work but where there are no current translation activities underway. Presently there are over 2,167 active Bible translation projects worldwide and work still needs to be done in a further 1,919 languages.

“And so I have made it my aim to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build on another man’s foundation, but as it is written: ‘To whom He was not announced, they shall see; And those who have not heard shall understand.’” (Romans 15:20)

• Someone has to be willing to go!!
• Others must be willing to send those who are going!
• So, where do you fit into God’s worldwide mission?

Paul’s Powerful Prayers (#3)

Romans 10:1-4

Periodically, someone will ask me how they might reach a person they love with the Gospel of Christ. Their request comes out of a deep burden for the person that doesn’t know Jesus. We should all be grateful for people that don’t hoard their eternal life just for themselves, but want others to experience it, too.

Usually, when I’m asked a question like this, I share three or four things that anyone can do to show the love of Christ to an unsaved loved one or friend. But, the one thing I always emphasize to everybody that asks this question is the importance of constant and focused prayer to God for the salvation of the one needing Christ.

We find in Paul’s Powerful Prayers a demonstration that this was his practice, as well. In Romans 10:1, Paul writes,

“Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved.”

Clearly, Paul considered prayer to be one of the most important things he could do in reaching his own countrymen for Christ. Of course, if you study his ministry carefully, you see that not only did he pray for people to be saved, he also brought them the message of the Gospel. But, prayer was essential to his message having a powerful impact on their lives.

Romans 9-11 deals with the issue of the nation of Israel and whether He has abandoned them and the promises He made to them. Paul argues that though God’s blessings are presently on His church, this did not violate or negate His commitment to His chosen people. In other words, God is not through with the Nation of Israel...in spite of their present unbelief.

Part of proving his thesis is found in his prayer to God for Israel to be saved. Though the people of Israel had stumbled spiritually (9:33), had sought to establish their own righteousness (10:3), and were guilty of unbelief (10:14), disobedience and obstinacy (10:21), God’s promises to them were still to be fulfilled.

Interestingly, in chapter nine Paul emphasizes the sovereignty of God in election (in choosing the nation of Israel) and in chapter ten he emphasizes human responsibility (why they have stumbled spiritually and He has established the church). At least five times (10:8, 11, 12, 16, 21) Paul lays their present, though temporary rejection by God, at the feet of the Nation of Israel because of their unbelief (human responsibility).

Theologians have long discussed how these two truths (divine sovereignty/human responsibility) work together, with most taking their ideas well beyond what the scripture teaches in defending their positions. For some reason, many people seem to believe that they can fully grasp all of the mind of God and are able to reason exactly how divine sovereignty and human responsibility may be reconciled with each other. Paul doesn’t make this mistake, but chooses to emphasize two equally important truths and leaves their reconciliation to God. Even though in chapter nine He is dealing with the sovereignty of God in election, he opens chapter 10 with a prayer begging God for the salvation of his fellow countrymen and places the responsibility on them to turn from their obstinacy and disbelief.

This prayer (10:1) serves as a model for how we should be praying for those that need to come to Christ and for the nations of the earth to hear the message of the Gospel.

His ultimate concern in this prayer is for the salvation of the people of Israel. To be “saved”  means to be rescued or delivered from some imminent danger. In the context of people’s lives and with eternity in view, the salvation of God is His rescuing people from the penalty of their sins. We are all sinners by birth, as well as by choice! Because God is righteous and holy, He cannot merely overlook our sins but must judge them justly. That means that every man living in this world is under the condemnation of God (John 3:18; Romans 6:23) and the only way to be delivered out from under it is through Jesus Christ.

I think many of the causes in which people are involved in our society are important and I’m thankful people are working to make a difference in these areas. But, if all we do is reform society and don’t also bring to them the transforming power of the Gospel, we have failed in our ultimate mission as believers and a church.

If you want to see the importance of this mission, just listen to how Paul’s prayer is described. It is his “heart’s desire” that people are delivered from the wrath to come for their sins against God. The “heart” sometimes points to the intellect, but here it more specifically points to his emotions. Listen to what he said in the opening verses of chapter 9 and hear the cry of Paul’s heart.

“I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen.” (Romans 9:1-5)

This is a man so deeply burdened for his fellow Israelites that if surrendering his own salvation would bring his people to faith in Christ...he would be willing to do so (this is hypothetical in order to express the depth of his burden).

When is the last time we wept over someone’s eternal soul? When have we ever felt so burdened about a person’s eternal destiny that it weighed heavily on us with an aching inside that drove us to prayer for them?

Take a few minutes this week to look around where you live, work and play to see the people that need to know Jesus. Can you see that they are more than bodies? They are eternal souls that are either going to spend eternity with God or separated from Him. When Paul looked at his fellow countrymen, his heart ached within him and it drove him to pray to God on their behalf that they might be saved. And, his prayer was more than just a casual request to God. The Greek word translated “prayer” indicates petitions on their behalf, even to the place of pleading (begging) with God for their souls.

Remember, as this chapter points out, the problem is their own willfulness and stubbornness to remain in unbelief (human responsibility). But, Paul would not give up on them and prayed for them to come to faith in Christ just as he had done on the road to Damascus.

Paul’s prayer is proof that he did not consider their rejection as final or that they could not be saved because of divine sovereignty.

As I said earlier, one of the most important things you can do for a person that does not know Christ is to intercede on his behalf that God might continue working in his heart to draw him to Himself.

Here are some practical ideas of how to go about praying for those who do not know Christ.

1. Ask God to help you see people as He sees them.
2. Make friends with people that don’t know Christ with the intention of introducing them to Christ.
3. Always keep a list with you of those you are asking God to save.
4. Set specific times to pray just for the eternal souls of those without Christ.
5. Pray for areas of the world where we have missionaries and ask God to open hearts to the Gospel.
6. Pray for areas of the world where we don’t know any missionaries and ask God to open doors of possibility for missionaries.
7. Pray for God to give you opportunities every week to share His love story and that you will not miss those opportunities.