Every Church for Every Nation

I love the month of October! I am so proud and grateful as a church, to focus and dedicate an entire month for the cause of Christ by getting behind Mission and the nations is just awesome. I am looking forward to as we focus on praying, sharing, and giving towards more to mobilize the gospel to the nations through the Cooperative Program Mission offering this month!

For 175 years, God has given life to this organization known as, “International Mission Board”. Their mission is to serve Southern Baptist in carrying out the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations. I just love that!

Since 1845, almost 25,000 Southern Baptist missionaries have shared the gospel, made disciples, planted churches, and planted their lives in 185 countries around the world. We are grateful and thankful how we can celebrate God’s faithfulness throughout the centuries!

He has called men and women to go to the unknown lands, such as Lottie Moon who we celebrate every year during the Christmas offering. The beauty of this partnership in the word, “Together” Yes, together in synergy SBC has boldly called out many for hundreds of years in cooperation to see Christ’s Name exalted among the nation! Because we are “together” we can do much more for His glory.

Thousands have answered that call and Southern Baptists have faithfully worked cooperatively to send them. Many completed their service and came back to their homeland. Some did not, one being Lottie Moon who gave her life for the cause of Christ.

You see, we can do so much more together in cooperation. Rather than being on an island stranded from others, if we together chase John’s vision in Revelation God has given, “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” (Rev 7:9).

That is what Christ had intended when he gave his last words. “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19). God has made our purpose clear. That is, every church reaching every nation for His glory. Together, taking the gospel to the ends of the earth! Nothing more, nothing less.

That is what fuels us as a church to bring the Name of Jesus to those who have never heard yet.

The Final Marching Orders from King Jesus

Who is this Christ? He is the one the Old Testament spoke of in the Messianic prophecy, “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.” (Isa 53:3-4).

What does Jesus do? He gives the Great Commission here. The use of two specific verbs of speaking (‘spoke to them, saying’) adds solemnity to the final words of Jesus in the Gospel.

“All authority” Jesus in his risen state, he exercises absolute authority throughout heaven and earth, which shows his deity. Jesus has supreme authority throughout the universe. Therefore, the mission to all nations is grounded in a command of the risen Jesus.

We cannot miss this as a church in the business of all the ministry activities we do. The risen Christ implied the need for the mission to all nations.

Each day, 157,690 people are dying without Christ. That is 59% of the world today is considered unreached — meaning Jesus is not known or named among 4.5 billion people. These people that God loves so much, they are in hard-to-reach places, and these people perhaps with civil war or refugee crisis are dispersed and displaced all around the world.

Lottie Moon said it well years ago, “Why should we not … do something that will prove that we are really in earnest in claiming to be followers of him who, though he was rich, for our sake became poor?”

Again, today, hundreds of thousands of people will die without the hope of Jesus. What would we as a church do about that?

The Glorious Calling of Christ’s Final Words 

As Dr. Paul Chitwood the president of International Mission Board mentioned at the annual SBC gathering in Anaheim, CA so well, “The greatest problem in the world is lostness. The only solution to this problem is the gospel!”

Jesus passed the torch to his disciples 2000 years ago, and now he is passing the torch unto you.

Christ has empowered you to carry out the gospel for the unknown future mission that lays ahead. Let us not lose heart and be weary in doing good, until that one day where, “every knee” will bow and “every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil 2:9–11).