Priority: All Peoples
Introduction
We have been working through a series this summer called our “Priority Series.” These are all topical sermons about areas of the Christian life that we want to regularly keep “front of mind” so to say. Some of these we need to come back to often because they are ideas that we forget easily. Take our first topic for instance: Worship. I know after that sermon everyone who was here for that one will remember that worship is:
Enjoying and displaying the worth of Christ in God–centered, Christ–exalting, Spirit–led, Bible-saturated affections and actions throughout our lives individually and corporately.
Or as I told the kids to remember:
Worship is everything we do that shows that God is important to us.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t usually wake up every day and immediately think about my role as a worshipper. I think about that on Sunday mornings when I come here and we are singing. I think about it sometimes when I am trying to read and think deep about the images God has given us in Scripture. But worship is not a regular image that I think about. That is why I need to be reminded to come back to it often. To enjoy this idea that my whole life—everything I do—is meant to offer up worship to God. Through my thoughts, my actions, my words, I am to make much of God and to make sure others know that I love and enjoy him in Jesus.
Witnessing, on the other hand, may be an idea we all know about TOO much. Even as a pastor, I have moments where I realize a conversation is going towards religion or faith, and I still have moments where my stomach knots up and I start to think, “How is this going to go?” Or, “Do I really want to have this conversation right now?” Now, I’m sure none of YOU have ever felt that way, but I imagine some Christians can. That is why we need to be reminded about the importance of witnessing. As Demer reminded us last week, witnessing is:
Personal and corporate strategies of courageous witness and social action to show the supreme value of Christ to fallen people and fallen culture.
Witnessing, like worship, happens with our whole lives, but importantly with our words. We are to have strategies—ways of explaining the gospel, ways of reaching out and connecting with our neighbors and community, ways of meeting together where they can see and visit (like this morning)—all of which are meant to try to draw IN a fallen people and a fallen community that they might see and value Jesus. To share with them the beauty of the goodness of our Messiah and King. We are excited about several ways we as a church body are going to reach out this fall and winter so be on the lookout for more about those outreach opportunities.
Worship and witness are both Priorities that, by the end of a sermon on them, you were probably thinking, “That is right—I need to make (worship/witness) more important in my.” We want to be worshippers of God—we love God and are so excited about what he has done in our life through Jesus! And we all agree witnessing is so important—none of us would be here if someone hadn’t shared about Jesus with us! We are happy to be reminded or reinvigorated on these topics.
We realize that worship should boil up and over and out in our lives because of the beauty we find in seeing and knowing God more through his Holy Spirit and his Word—Jesus Christ. It should lead us to want to share that idea with others: a desire to have others join with us in our worship of God! To steal and paraphrase a quote:
“[Witness] exists because worship doesn’t. [Witnessing] is our way of saying: the joy of knowing Christ is not a private, or tribal, or national or ethnic privilege. It is for all. And that’s why we go. Because we have tasted the joy of worshiping Jesus, and we want all the families of the earth included.”
(John Piper)
All Peoples Introduction
And here is where we bump into the third party in this discussion. Others. Not just God. Not just me and my growth or me and my need to rightly love our God. Other sinful people. And not just one kind of sinful people—as though maybe I will only be called to witness to the people I can relate to easiest. Sinful people, all around us, with every proclivity of sin. Multitudes of people with backgrounds and cultures that create a divide in our understanding of one another. Sinful people living right next door to me. Sinful people living far away from me. Sinful people I may just not like.
The priority we are looking at this morning is the priority that God has placed on making sure that we care about All Peoples coming to know and love God in Jesus Christ.
That phrasing, All Peoples, may sound odd to you, but it is meant to help us remember the breadth and the scope of our call in witnessing. We want to make sure that every type of individual person AND every group of peoples on this planet have a chance to see and witness the beauty of God displayed through HIS Kingdom people that they might make a choice about following Jesus. The two main verses we are using today are meant to help us see that. Look at Matthew 28
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “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. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
(Matthew 28:16–20 ESV)
In the Great Commission, Jesus proclaims the breadth of peoples we are to witness to in geography. “All nations,” here, “panta ta ethne” in the Greek, is pointing us to see the multi-ethnic nature of the people of God. Many tribes, nations, languages, and peoples that God wants to have in his beautiful family. This call challenges all of us on the how do we reach OUT, away from our culture and ethnicity towards those who have a very different culture and ethnicity. How do we go to those who live across a divide—whether physical (oceans), or cultural (language, customs, etc)—and share the beauty of Jesus with them?
And yet, no matter where you find yourself in the ever-broadening rings of sharing the gospel, we will still encounter people who are different than us. You will encounter that in another country and you will encounter that here—in your neighborhood, your work, your family. People who are just like you. People who are within your culture. Yet they will still be people who are quite different than you. That is why we are also looking at James 2:1 today:
My brothers and sisters, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.
(James 2:1 ESV)
We don’t want to forget that we will be challenged to witness to those all around us—whether you stay in your culture or move to another culture—because there will always be those who simply aren’t easy to witness to. For one reason or another there are people you will struggle to want to share with or, perhaps, to even want to see saved. Especially when in your mind becoming saved means they need to become—immediately—just like you. As though you and I are the measuring stick for Christians!?
This morning, we come to our third priority of All Peoples and acknowledge that witnessing other people is hard, no matter where we are witnessing to them. Isn’t that the truth! People are always the problem. You and I are the biggest problems for our church as we bring our own sin and proclivities, our weaknesses, to this relationship with one another. People sinned against God in the garden. People put our savior Jesus on the cross. And it was exactly these people that Jesus came to save!
The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners…
(1 Timothy 1:15 ESV)
This morning, I want to encourage you to think about our call to witness and worship, but specifically our call to witness to All Peoples and see All Peoples worship our God. When we talk about Worship and Witnessing and All Peoples, we want to remember that we are called to be God’s kingdom people who are:
All Peoples:
Valuing all image-bearers of God regardless of ethnicity, gender, and even sinful proclivity as we seek to witness to all the beauty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
(2x)
And as we have already been pointing out this morning, we want to think carefully about All Peoples and about our desire to:
Reach All Peoples
Love of All Peoples
How do we rightly orient our hearts to All Peoples that we might witness to them and (by God’s grace) see the salvation of many?
All Peoples: Loving Sinful Individuals
Let’s start with this last idea: Loving All Peoples. We never want to forget the individuals who are at stake in our witnessing. No matter how we group people or where they are located, we must start with the realization that God saves individuals! Regardless of our background, it is God who comes and meets personally with each of us in our salvation. And it is through the Holy Spirit—God himself living with and in us—that our hearts are changed. At some point for the first time we find ourselves at wondering, and then eventually believing, that God himself died for our sins on the cross.
As we look at the Old Testament, we see God has been after individuals and works through individuals. Adam & Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses. God saved these individuals and then worked through these individuals. We see the same in the New Testament as Jesus chooses disciples and teaches many followers. It is to be through them, through these individuals and through you and me, that the entire world is blessed. The world is meant to come back to God in an individual relationship with God as his sons and daughters. Look with me at Isaiah 43:6–7:
I will say to the north, Give up, and to the south, Do not withhold; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.
(Isaiah 43:6–7 ESV)
Becoming God’s sons and daughters speaks to the very personal and individual aspect of our salvation and the goal of witnessing. We want to see specific individuals come to know
God and walk with him and his people. We want people to come back to their good Father again through faith in Jesus.
And yet, as we mentioned, the hard part is all people are sinners. Look again at the people God was bringing to himself and to his people throughout Scripture:
Noah: an old man who looks crazy as he builds and ark and gets drunk on wine when they finally are back on dry land, yet he brings humanity safely through the flood
Moses: the adopted child of a slave woman who grows up in Pharaoh’s household, kills an Egyptian, and struggles to speak in front of an audience, yet stands in the very presence of God and leads God’s people
David: the youngest son, a shepherd (not a glorious job), who has an affair and kills the woman’s husband, and who becomes the man who is said to be “after God’s own heart”
Rehab & Ruth: A prostitute turned God fearer who hides the Israelite spies, and the widowed Moabitess who pulls off some interesting acts to woo and be redeemed by Boaz, both of whom become the the great grandmas of Jesus).
Jesus’s disciples: tax collectors, fishermen, an ex-pharisee who killed Christians, all who abandon him when he is arrested yet change the world by witnessing to the wonder they saw in Jesus.
Again, and again we see God use all these different individuals—“peoples”—who are so different yet ALL sinners, to his own glory. This is not by accident—it is a feature that God builds his kingdom with people who are sinners. He chooses to use the weak, the broken, the sinners:
And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
(Luke 5:30–32 ESV)
But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
(Romans 5:8–9 ESV)
And we also see in Scripture WHY God choose sinners to be part of his people:
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.
(2 Corinthians 4:7 ESV)
God has chosen sinners 1) because that is the only option he has—we are all sinners, but 2) because he receives all the glory by demonstrating that God alone is able to save all peoples with every type of sin and every proclivity to sin. Our God gets glory when sinners are regenerated to new life through his Holy Spirit and walk with him. That is you and me! That is everyone he wants us to witness to. Through the diversity of his people God reveals the breadth of his own glory as he uses individuals to demonstrate his love and creativity and as he draws others to his people. Like a multi-faceted diamond, God’s glory reflects in manifold ways through his diverse peoples and their diverse stories. And that includes his ability to save any individual from any background and any sin.
Let’s stop for a minute and realize what we have been saying. You and I, we have a God who loved us so much that he sent his only son to earth that he might live a righteous life for you, die for your sins, and raise himself back to life in order that you might know he has all authority and you have a hope for a new life with God in Jesus. And God is working this in you through his Holy Spirit. You are his children! You are no longer aliens and strangers, but now part of the household of God!
And God chose sinners. Praise God! That is you and me—sinners. We looked at this verse earlier:
The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners…
(1 Timothy 1:15 ESV)
We believe that wholeheartedly when we think about the world outside of ourselves. When we think about others—the people we know in our lives who frustrate us. Yet we struggle to remember to finish the sentence:
The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.
(1 Timothy 1:15 ESV)
I believe that one of our largest barriers to witnessing well to All Peoples is our unwillingness to deal with messy sinners like ourselves. We want to find and witness to people who are already “mostly” cleaned up, who are already a lot like us, but just need a little encouragement on who Jesus is and hopefully we will be able to be the ones to help “harvest” that believer into the kingdom. Praise God he didn’t do that for me and you because we wouldn’t be here if that was the process. All of us were dead in our sin and rebellion to God (Ephesians 2:1, Romans 6:11). We weren’t mostly there, about ready to loving God. We were all as far aways as you could—we were dead.
Do you realize that God not only loves a diverse group of people and peoples from all corners of the world, but that he has loved and saved SINNERS? That means we need to expand that group to include your prejudiced co-worker or family member, the person who wronged you, and even YOU.
My brothers and sisters, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.
(James 2:1 ESV)
Friends, God shows us again and again in Scripture our situation of being utterly helpless and away from him that we might remember that is the situation of All Peoples. We all need God! We all need saving. And we all need it in a very personal way, specific to our struggles and sins. With all our own personal quirks and issues, we have been found righteous only in Christ! And if we don’t value those who are different than us, whether it is different by genetics, language, culture, or sadly even sinful choice, we are implicitly saying that they are not created in the image of God and they are less worthy of grace and hearing about the beauty of the gospel of Jesus than we are.
Friends, at Main Street we will abhor any teaching or insinuation that there is a litmus test for who we can relate to or love for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ. God’s people are not only a tapestry of our beautiful God-given differences, but also a woven reminder of the sins that God has redeemed us all from, to his glory. In Christ, no one is unable to be forgiven through faith, and no one is unreachable by the sovereign Spirit of God.
Application
Main Street, there are many ways you and I probably need to be challenged to love All Peoples, but today one way I want to challenge us is to consider those we struggle to witness to because of their sinful proclivities.
This has always been hard. The Jewish people viewed their immediate neighbors, the Samaritans, as dirty people and horrible sinners. That is why Jesus dares to sit with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 and tells the parable of the good Samaritan in Luke 10:25–27. Jesus wanted to challenge the Jewish people on their prejudice against their neighbors. He wanted them to consider if they were withholding the knowledge they had of God from sinners they didn’t want to witness to. In the New Testament, we see Paul quoting Epimenides, a 7th century Greek poet who said:
Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.
(Titus 1:12 ESV)
Yet Paul encourages Titus to engage them, nonetheless. If that is your view, encourage them towards God, Paul says.
Everyone has this category. Who is it for you? Who are the Peoples you struggle to witness to? Is it someone who wronged you in some way—maybe even some egregious way—that you now see as unworthy of receiving any witness of the gospel? Is it people with a particular sin? Perhaps it is sexual sins—would you be willing to loving walk with and witness to someone who was a trans person or in a committed homosexual relationship? Would you dare witness and share with a white supremacist or someone incarcerated?
There is no one who should be beyond our sharing of the beauty of the gospel, and no sin that we don’t believe God can overcome in his timing and his ways. Why do we believe this and hold this hope?
And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
(1 Corinthians 6:11 ESV)
My brothers and sisters, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.
(James 2:1 ESV)
All Peoples: Our Reach
If we begin to be able to see others around us as sinners just like us who need saving, and stop fearing witnessing to them because of those difficulties and differences, we might begin to be able to consider how far do we go? Where might we be willing go to save these sinners like us who need to know Jesus and find life in him? There is a tension we begin to feel when we see that all people are sinners, they all need Jesus like us, and they are EVERYWHERE! I have found that being in a big city like New York or San Francisco can be overwhelming sometimes when I think about this. Millions of people, everywhere, who need Jesus. If your compassion begins to rise for All Peoples, you will feel a tension on where to start: Who do you go after?
There is an example that has been used that I think can give us a glimpse of this picture and this holy tension. Imagine for a moment that you have come up on a shipwreck. You have been put in charge of two smaller boats with ten people on each one that are going out to help with the rescue. You are the only two boats for miles around, and you come upon the first shipwreck. And you can see hundreds of people all around you, floating, treading water, desperately in need of help. There might even be more than you can fit into your two small rescue boats.
Then, off in the distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, maybe half a mile away, through large waves and with dark clouds appearing on the horizon, you hear very faintly the sound of other voices crying out. You can’t tell how many, but someone is there. You realize that must be the other ship.
In our human wisdom (and it would be good wisdom) you as the leader of the rescue would probably make a very practical decision: You begin by rescuing all those that are around you and save as many as you can here. Because who knows, by the time your boats cross the waves and get to the other place, you may only find one or two individuals still alive. And leaving this side runs the risk of leaving people you can see right in front of you. Why go far away, through peril and perhaps for little gain, when there would appear to be much to do right in front of you?
It is good that many of you will stay here in Boise, Idaho or at least in the United States and witness in a culture that is familiar to you, where you know the language, and where you can easily slide in-and-out of many different contexts. Don’t feel bad about that. That is both a pragmatically good choice, and likely what God has for most of you.
But what of those who are not nearby?
Note again what Jesus says to his disciples in Matthew 28:
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “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. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
(Matthew 28:16–20 ESV)
Much is made of several phrases here in Matthew 28. The first we should note is the phrase “Go therefore.” The better translation there would be “As you are going.” God presumes we will all be going, whether it is from one job to another, one house to another, or even one country to another. In fact, the older you get, the more you will realize it is no mistake that our life doesn’t seem to have permanency to it. God has many peoples he wants to save, and we are prone to sitting still. There IS an aspect of the familiarity that we seek that is good. In the new earth we will not continually roam looking for our home—God will have provided a place for each and every one of us. But here, now, on this earth, there is much to do. It should not surprise us that God moves us around that we might engage all his peoples.
And additionally, the scope of where God’s people are is HUGE! That has to do with another phrase here in Matthew 28, the phrase “make disciples of all nations.” It is the phrase I mentioned at the beginning that is “panta ta ethne” in Greek—all the ethnics.
Let me take you back to the 1970s for a moment (for some of you that is ancient history)! It was a newsworthy time! The Beetles disbanded in 1970, but by 1971 Disney World had opened. Richard Nixon was elected and resigns as president. Steve and Sharon Collard were newlyweds! And by the end of the decade I am born!
Evangelical Christians were ecstatic! Of the 196 countries in the world, there were missionaries in each of them, and they thought they had, for all intent-and-purposes, completed the Great Commission. The goal now was simply growing those churches, adding to their numbers, and waiting for Jesus to come.
But not all were convinced. In fact, it was at the Lausanne Conference in 1974 that Billy Graham invited a little-known professor, Ralph Winters, to give a speech. It was titled, “The Highest Priority: Cross-Cultural Evangelism.” You can imagine that not many people thought this would be a significant speech. Then this quiet spoken professor from the newly started Fuller School of Missions went on to drop a bomb. He claimed that the real issue in missions to fulfilling the Great Commission wasn’t getting a missionary in each of the 196 countries. Rather, he said, there were around 17,000 unique people groups in the world, and if we wanted to reach them, each of them likely needed a missionary to engage them and a unique church planted in each group. “Panta ta ethne” – all the ethnic groups.
This began quite the debate within Christianity. Who, and how do we tell who, is included in the “All Peoples” we are to pursue in order to fulfill this great commission? Just to give you an example of this debate: When Wycliffe Bible translators went into Sudan they figured they needed 50 translations of the bible to reach every distinct group in that country. However, when Gospel Recordings went there, they determined they would need 130 audio translations to accurately communicate the gospel to every person. So how many people groups should we see in Sudan? How many different missionaries and effort will it take to reach everyone there?
There is a holy tension where God is after not only individuals, but individuals representing every group—or as scripture would say “every tribe, nation, people, tongue.” Throughout scripture when God talks about his pursuit of his sons and daughters, at times the word for people (individuals) is used, and at time it is larger words like nation. Even the promise to Abraham is repeated to his sons Isaac and Jacob with the word nation instead of just family. Jesus specifically calls the disciples to this ever-expanding pursuit not only in Matthew 28, but also in Acts 1:8, and he calls them to gather nations:
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
(Acts 1:8 ESV)
Jesus calls the disciples to witness and tells them to go to nations. We see an ever-expanding circle from where the disciples were starting (Jerusalem), out to their region (Judea), their neighbors (Samaria), to the ends of the world.
God’s people who are scattered matter not only because there are individuals there who need to know God, but God cares about Peoples—nations, ethnic groups—that they might be represented and represent him! This is one of the grand promises and pictures of Revelation 7:9:
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, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
(Revelation 7:9–10 ESV)
Again, we see the beauty of the diversity that our God is after. He will not neglect any sinner that he might show that the only path back to himself is forgiveness of ANY and ALL sins in Jesus Christ. Similarly, God wants people from every tribe, tongue, and nation that he might show that the only hope of ANY nation and people is Jesus.
Even in the Old Testament, God’s people were meant to be a light that every person from everywhere might know God. God was bringing individuals from many different NATIONS to HIS nation. The story of the Old Testament was never ONLY about Israel. In the Exodus we are told there was a mixed multitude in Exodus 12:38. Egyptians were going out of the land with Israel because they had seen and believed in what God was doing and coming to faith. Jethro, Moses’s father-in-law, is a Midianite and lives with the people of Israel and helps lead them. Caleb, the great warrior of Judah in Numbers 32:12 was a Kenizzite, one of the Canaanite tribes. Ruth is from Moab. God was always bringing many different types of individuals to himself THROUGH his people.
And that mission continues in the New Testament. Listen to how Paul talks about this idea to the Ephesians:
And [Jesus] came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So, then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.
(Ephesians 2:17–21 ESV)
God is making himself a people out of strangers and aliens who all now are co-citizens and co-family members—sons and daughters—with the other people he has called. While we see many Jews in Jesus’s disciple group, we also quickly see people many other individuals from all over: Cornelius, the Roman Centurian. The Ethiopian eunuch witnessed to by Philip. Luke, a Greek physician.
Wherever possible we want to press in to love every person who is “different” from us as a matter of conviction. The more we value diversity in every area that we can—diversity of Godly thoughts, Godly vocation, Godly personalities, God-given gifts, God-honoring perspectives, God-given genetic or mental or emotional differences—the more likely we will meet each new difference, even sinful ones, with a heart of pressing in through love instead of sinful recoiling.
No one will get to heaven and be able to say, “Lord, you don’t understand how hard my sin was. How could I have turned to you and trusted you with THAT sin?” because if anyone were to say that God would bring forth a seemingly unending line of people who could testify that they found their salvation from THAT sin through Jesus and the power of his Holy Spirit. Similarly, if anyone were to say, “God, you don’t know how hard MY culture was to live in? How could I have served you rightly and righteously in MY culture?” And God would similarly show them a multitude of men and women, young and old, all from their culture and people who will cry out in their own language their love of God and his salvation of them, saying:
“Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
(Revelation 7:9–10 ESV)
Application
If one of our biggest challenges to loving All Peoples when we think about individuals is remember they will always be sinners like us and it will be hard to relate to them, then clearly the largest difficulty when we think about the nations and peoples of this world is the challenge to getting there. Going across cultures usually takes learning a new language, the logistics of setting up a new life in a new location, the time it takes to build connections, find work, and integrate yourself into a culture.
For many of us that may sound too hard. And, likely, God hasn’t called most of you to be the one to GO. Most of us, as the story of the boats shows, are meant to stay near and do work where we are naturally suited to worship and witness and engage All Peoples around us. But the beauty of the New Covenant is we are now MOBILE temples. We take with us, wherever we go, the very Holy Spirit of God. And by strategically sending people and going to different corners of the globe, in going we bring with us the very presence of God that he might use us to draw his people to himself.
That means if you are not a goer, there are two things you must consider. First, we live in an amazing age where God is bringing the nations TO US! Specifically here in Boise. We area tier 2 city, which means the government purposefully brings refugees to Boise, Idaho. Are you taking advantage of that reality? That you don’t have to learn a new language or move to a new country to begin to see God’s multi-ethnic people love and praise him through our neighbors here today. What an amazing gift!
But second, if you aren’t a goer, you must be a sender. How else do we show we care about the breadth of those God desires to bring into his kingdom? Those who don’t go are called to help sacrifice along with those who go to make sure the goal of reaching All Peoples is taken up in our generation. That means funding, supporting, praying for, and helping with the global work of missions.
But I’m not going to let you all off that easy, as though you can throw some money at this idea and not really consider it. Have you really considered if God would have you go? Have you prayed, have you asked, and have you considered it with an open heart? What if God, in his infinite wisdom, had you learn to be an engineer, a contractor, an accountant, a doctor, a homeschooling mom, that you might take those skills and go to another country and use those skills while worshipping and witness to All God’s Peoples there? Consider the beauty of this call and this great need!
Conclusion & Connection
Friends, we are called to be worshippers of God who witness our worship to others through our entire life and what we do and say. And we want to see All Peoples come to worship God as well alongside us. All Peoples in terms of their individual differences, backgrounds, and sin. Whether they are easy to get along with or hard. And we want to see All Peoples—all nations, tribes, and tongues—come to worship Jesus as well as a beautiful multi-ethnic cacophony of glory and praise to him now and in the new earth.
And let me give you one more encouragement. I think we also struggle to consider how to reach All Peoples because we don’t realize the grand commonality between all ways of reaching All Peoples. Listen to what God said to Israel through Jeremiah when they were in captivity:
Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
(Jeremiah 29:4–7 ESV)
The normal course of life for all God’s kingdom people, whether you witness near or far, with people you find easy to witness to or hard to witness to, is to find that you live your normal life amongst the people around you and seek the welfare of the city and the witness of the people that God might be worshipped! That’s it. On the one hand that is very simple, and on the other that will require great faith. And we do that specifically as we see God gather a people—an expression of his body, a church—and take part in worshipping him together:
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not 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.
(Hebrews 10:19–25 ESV)
What we are doing here—living our life, seeking the good of our families, neighbors, and community—and gathering that we might together grow, love, and worship God, is what all of God’s Peoples, near and far, are called to do. What we are practicing here is what prepares us to Witness to All Peoples here in Boise, and this is what prepares those of you considering going abroad. Both choices have much more in common than they do differences. And we find that commonality in our mission as God’s church—All Peoples gathered near and far.
Response
All Peoples:
Valuing all image-bearers of God regardless of ethnicity, gender, and even sinful proclivity as we seek to witness to all the beauty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
How might God be challenging you in this idea this morning? Let me give you just two questions to consider this morning:
Loving All Peoples
Who is hard for you to love by witnessing to them?
Reaching All Peoples
How might God be calling you to Go or Send?
Both of those get to the core of the idea of All Peoples as a priority: who are we willing to love and where are we willing to go to love them? God loves you, and he loves All his Peoples just like he has loved you. And he wants to use his people—me and you—to reach those who haven’t yet come back to him. How might God be calling you, today, to consider All Peoples differently so that they might witness you worship of God and come before him as well?
Prayer
Communion
Benediction
Colossians 3:16–17
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
