The World Without Christ

God’s Mission

Welcome back everybody, I’m so glad everyone is here! If you are new here, special welcome to you! We take this time every week at imprint to see what the Word of God, the Bible, has to teach us. We are starting a new series that I am calling The World Without Christ.

This series is very near and dear to my heart because we are going to be talking about missions. Who has heard the term missions before? Does anyone want to be brave and take a stab at what missions means in the church?

Missions comes primarily from the coined term “The Great Commission” from Matthew 28:19 , Which were Jesus’ last words while He was on earth before ascending into heaven. Throw it up on the screen.

Matthew 28:19 ESV

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,

So the idea of missions is going outside of your local church to spread the Gospel which is the news of Jesus Christ, with unbelievers, and to disciple them, bringing them up in the faith and baptizing them.

This mission we actually see throughout the bible is God’s heartbeat. From the beginning of time, God desired for every nation and tribe and tongue to belong to Him. We just studied a lot about Israel in the time of David a few weeks ago. Through Israel, God was trying to reach all the nations. It was never about just Israel. Let alone just North America.

Check out this verse from Revelation 7:9-10 during the last days of the earth, this is God’s plan!

Revelation 7:9–10 ESV

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!”

Every nation, tribe, people and language.

Growing up, I had a very North American attitude about the church. Of course I knew about missions, I went to a missions trip to Nicaragua which is in South America when I was very young, I understood that there were people out there that needed to feel the love of Christ. But I did not really get God’s heartbeat for missions.

There are groups of people that in the Missions world are called UPG’s or Unreached People Groups.

An unreached people group (UPG) is a group of people with a common language and culture distinct from those around them that has little to no access to the gospel of Jesus Christ and therefore no opportunity to respond to the Gospel.

I would like to share a few statistics about the state of the world right now.

over 6000 UPG in the world. 42% of the world is considered unreached

2.7% of all missionaries are among UPGs. 1.7% of Missions funding towards UPGs

Take a look at this map

So the green dots are the people groups that are more reached, the yellow is more-less reached and all the red dots are considered the unreached people groups, and this big rectangle here is called the 10-40 window. the latitude/longitute range that has the most significant amount of unreached people groups.

Okay this is something I did not get when I was in highschool. Do we know what happens do every single person that lives in one of these red zones?

These people are being born, living their entire lives, and dying without hearing the name of Jesus. And the tragedy of the world is that the bible tells us that if you do not accept Jesus as your saviour, the punishment is eternal separation from God, in Hell. Does that not seem unfair to you?

Does it not bug you? That we were all born in a society that has churches all over the place, and the Gospel, although not super popular, is in our schools and our homes. with millions of bibles in Sarnia alone.

It took me way to long to realize that I was not just comfortable and okay with this state of the world. And here is the thing, we are not supposed to be comfortable with this. This is a tragedy! But it is God’s heartbeat throughout the whole bible that we as followers of God need to be doing something about this!

Throw this passage up on the screen,

Romans 10:14–15 ESV

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

How can these lost peoples be saved if we do not go?

So okay, God will set apart some missionaries to spread the gospel overseas, thats great! Those guys are awesome! But not me, right? Who’s thinking that? I thought that.

Let me tell you something, as Christians, if we are not involved with missions, we are downright sinning. Hear me out. This is the mission of Christ. The last instruction for us before He ascended to heaven.

Go and make disciples of all nations.

Do not hear me saying that evangelism is much more important in Papua New Guinea than it is in your school. I’m not saying that. There are people in your high schools that are just as lost as the people in the 10-40 window. The biggest difference is that the people in your homes and high schools are reached. You might ask how do I know they are reached, and the answer is that you are there. You are near them and you have the Gospel. It is our duty to reach those around us with the Truth of Christ.

But these people in the Red do not even have a CHANCE.

So how in the world would we get involved? I get you all are in high school still and have a lot going on. But this is how we all can get involved.

Prayer. And I know that sounds redundant and we say it so much at church that it can lose its value. But we NEED to pray. And especially for the UPG’s of the World.

Pray to God and ask Him to bring up more missionaries to be sent to UPGs in the world. Pray the dangerous prayer, asking God if He wants YOU to be one of those people!

I have a task for you guys.

Take out your phones. let me see them. Right now, Go to the app store on your phone and look up “Joshua Project”

An app should appear called “Unreached of the Day”

download that app, and open it. When you do, you will see a daily updated quick summary of a real life, real time people group in the world that we live in that do not have access to the Gospel. It will tell you a little about them and a button that says pray at the bottom.

I want to challenge you to join me in hopping on this app once a day to pray for a specific people group that is currently living just to die without ever hearing about Jesus’ gift to us.