The Gospel to All Nations

SERMON: 2008-02-22--mt2408--the-gospel-to-all-nations SOURCE DURATION: 00:42:51.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.98 APPROVED: false REASON: All candidates represent continuous sermon content (a sustained benediction/call to action). Therefore, the final candidate is selected as the last token of the sermon. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:40:31.520-00:42:50.200 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- So, as we take a few moments tonight, then, and look at verse 14 of Matthew chapter 24, I want to set the stage by pointing out three things in that verse that are important for us to understand. First of all, the subject of verse 14 of chapter 24 of Matthew is the gospel of the kingdom. This gospel of the kingdom, he says, will be preached in the whole world. Now, the word gospel, of course, means good news. The kingdom that is being talked about is the kingdom of Jesus. The good news of the kingdom of Jesus is that in Christ, God is restoring the kingdom that had been lost to Adam and Eve. You'll recall that, of course, when God created Adam and Eve, placed them in the garden, they were to rule on his behalf. They were to build a civilization that was centered on God, that carried out his will, and that became a celebration of God's presence and God's life and God's rule. It's hard for us to even begin to imagine. I mean, did you ever think about this? What would the world have looked like if Adam and Eve had not fallen into sin? What would civilization have looked like? What would it have looked like if he had had a million people or multitudes more than that, that really lived with God at the center and that obeyed him and that structured all of life according to his kingdom? Well, you'd have heaven on earth, wouldn't you? You'd have God's original vision for the human race come to completion. Along comes the fall, we rebel against God, we commit idolatry as we worship other gods in place of the true God, and of course, the whole message of scripture is that God is in this process of redemption whereby he reaches into the world, reconciles people to himself, and reestablishes his kingdom, and as you know, by the time history ends, we sit on thrones with Jesus ruling over the kingdom, doing the will of God the Father. Again, I can't even pretend to understand what that's going to look like except it's going to be the fulfillment of our every hope and our every dream. So the subject of this verse is the good news of the kingdom. It's not just, "Oh, your sins are going to be forgiven," it's not just, "One day you'll go to heaven." No, it's the good news of the kingdom. God in Christ is reestablishing his kingdom. His will is going to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Then the object in this verse is all the nations because he says, "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations." Now the word "nations" there is, of course, the word "ethnos" from which we get the English word "ethnic" and refers first and foremost to the most primary form of human community, which is the family and its extension, tribes. That's an ethnic group, a group that shares a common language, a common culture, a common background and a common authority. And then by extension, of course, you take these tribes and you place them together and we have what we call our modern nations, people that share a common government, common constitution, often a common language and certain common values. And one of the reasons a country like Kenya can all of a sudden blow up the way that it's blowing up is that it's composed of, what, 42 different tribes. And for years now, one of those tribes has been dominant over the other tribes. And as you know, they've had this recent election and a lot of the people believe that the dominant tribe won the election by cheating and by dishonest means and that's where the rebellion comes from. But I'm often surprised at what a thin veneer of civilization covers a nation and how thin is the line between order and chaos. Well, the reason is because when you take all these tribes and you place them together artificially in a nation, those tribal distinctives continue. And all it takes is a sense of mistrust and a sense of I'm being violated and fragmentation takes place. So Jesus says this gospel of the kingdom is to be proclaimed to all nations. And then the verse goes on to say, as a testimony to the nations. Why is the gospel proclaimed to all nations, every ethnic group? Because it is to be a testimony to the nations. In other words, testimony there is the Greek word maturion, which is typically used in the New Testament and translated as witness. And Jesus says to the disciples in Acts chapter 1, "You're going to be my witnesses." The word is maturion and we get the English word martyr from that. And the idea here is that the gospel is going to be proclaimed to all nations as a testimony to the nations. Why? Well, for the very simple reason that all ethnic groups or all nations need to be given the opportunity to respond to the gospel of the kingdom. Because you see, while as Don Richardson points out in his book, "Eternity in Their Hearts," there are many peoples who have a latent knowledge of the true God, in most ethnic groups that knowledge of the true God has been pushed to the back burner and people have become worshipers of idols. The true God is too holy for people to approach. They can't find him. People are inherently spiritual. And so in their spirituality, they make covenants with the forces of darkness. Don Richardson talks about the central people in northeastern India, close to Pakistan there and rather to Bangladesh, I think, a people that originally came from the Middle East and had some knowledge of the true God until they came to a mountain range that they could not get through. And so they cried out to evil spirits for deliverance and they said, "If you will show us the way out of this situation, we'll enter into covenant with you." And they discovered what's probably now known as the Khyber Pass. They traveled through there and they became an idol worshiping community. And the knowledge of the true God which they had carried with them from time immemorial began to disappear. And so what you've got is the nations of the world unable to yield to God and to know his authority and so they begin to build their civilization on wisdom from below. And wisdom from below, as you know, says there either is no God or if he's there, you can't trust him, you can depend on him for really practical answers to life. You got to look to other spiritual forces or to other people and you've got the whole development of idolatry and you get the development of what St. Augustine many years ago called the City of Man. Genesis chapter 4, Cain's story, a powerful example of a civilization that is built in rebellion against God, that is built on the lie and that is governed by the pride of life and the lust of the eye and the lust of the flesh whose end is always violence. And in worldly wisdom then, how do you arrive at power? Well, you arrive at power by climbing over everybody else, might is right, and your success in life then is determined by a combination of your natural giftedness and your ability to fight and your ability to climb over everybody else and everybody is doing their level best then to hold on to what they've got. And when you talk about nation rising against nation and kingdom rising against kingdom, it's always in that context, it's always in the context of there's only so much to go around and those who have the biggest mouths, those who have the greatest strength, those who have the greatest military power, they're the ones to succeed. So that's at the bottom, that's the philosophy on which the kingdoms of the world are built. Stands in sharp contrast to the kingdom of Jesus, which is a kingdom as we have been seeing modeled in the Sermon on the Mount, based on relationship with God, based on obedience to his will, based on the realization that exaltation doesn't come from east or west, it doesn't come from the strength of man or the strength of a horse, no, it comes from having God's favor and God's power modeled in the person of Jesus who didn't fight to defend himself, but who humbled himself even to death and across and today has been crowned Lord of Lords and King of Kings because the kingdom is God, the fathers to give and he's given it to Jesus and he promises it to all of his children. So here's the gospel of the kingdom, it's being proclaimed to all nations, it's being proclaimed as a testimony to all nations, why? So that all nations will have the choice, are we going to hold on to our wisdom from below or are we going to yield to King Jesus and acknowledge his authority and let him be the ruler over us? And I think personally, and there are people who may disagree with me on that, that that's the whole point in the following chapter, in Matthew chapter 25, where you have this story of all the nations gathered before the Son of Man on the Day of Judgment. Let me read you just a couple of those verses, you'll know the passage well. "When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him and he will separate." And the NIV has the people, but I think it's a wrong translation because the Greek is actually them. "All the nations will be gathered before him and he will separate them one from another. As the shepherd separates the sheep from the goat, he will put the sheep in his right hand and the goats on his left. The passage then goes on into giving the criteria for that judgment. "Come, who are blessed by my Father, take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world." And he goes on into, "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me." And then, of course, they ask him, "Jesus, when did we see this?" And he says, "Inasmuch as you have done this to what? One of the least of these my brothers, you did it unto me." And likewise, the goats who get rejected are rejected in the context of you have not done it to one of the least of these my brethren. Now, most people interpret that passage as referring to poor people, those who are hungry and those who were in jail and who were thirsty and all of that sort of thing. And I personally take issue with that interpretation. And I take issue with that interpretation for two reasons. Nowhere in scripture are we ever told that people are the brethren of Jesus just because they're poor. Now, it's important for Christians to take care of poor people and all the rest of this sort of thing, but you cannot build it on this passage. Because in fact, Jesus, earlier on in Matthew's gospel, when he's in this controversy with his family, he says in Matthew chapter 12, "Who are my brothers and my sister?" And that whole passage about, "Who's my family?" This is after his mother and his brothers are coming to straighten him out. And somebody comes and tells him, "Well, your mother and your brothers are there." And he says, "Who's my family?" And you remember the answer, "Those who do the will of my father in heaven." Poor people, no more than rich people, are by definition the brethren of Jesus because the brethren and the sisters of Jesus are only those whose hearts have been yielded to God in repentance and in faith. You understand what I'm saying? It's very important to understand because we live in a world where people are always talking about seeing the face of Jesus in the poor. And it's very good to take care of the poor, but there are many other scriptures that teach us to do that. This passage in my judgment is not one that can be justified to do that. Second reason I believe this doesn't refer simply to poor people is because if you read the context of these chapters together, it's in the context of the disciples of Jesus being sent to the nations to bear witness to them. And in the context of bearing witness to Jesus in going to the nations, there are going to be some individuals, in fact, some nations that will receive them, and there are those nations who will not receive them. And so how the nations receive the representatives of Jesus is an indication of how they respond to Jesus because Jesus puts it this way earlier on in Matthew chapter 10, 40 to 42, "He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me." And John in his epistle later on, he puts it this way, he says, "We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us, but whoever is not from God does not listen to us." This is how we recognize the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. On that final day, how are the nations going to be judged? They're going to be judged by what they have done with the representatives of Jesus. And where they have taken the representatives of Jesus and written them off and killed them and put them in jail and ultimately rejected their message, they're going to be judged not just for what they've done to the representatives of Jesus, but what they've done to Jesus because these representatives represent Jesus, if you follow my drift there. And likewise, how are the nations going to inherit the kingdom in the age to come? It's by what they've done with Jesus as Jesus is modeled by those who represent him. And I've often said, one of the best ways to get a blessing is to bless those who are representative of God because Jesus talks about, "If you bless a prophet, you get a prophet's reward." It's a lot easier to bless a prophet and get a prophet's reward than to be a prophet and live with all the consequences that come along with being a prophet. So I always say, especially make sure you treat preachers nice because you'll get rewarded in the process. Only kidding. All right, you with me? You can look at that passage for yourself and as I said, the NIV throws it off because the NIV says he will separate the people, making it sound like it's primarily about individuals. But I checked the Greek and most other translations are much closer to the actual Greek there, will separate them, that is nation from nation, on the basis of how they have treated those who represent the person of Jesus Christ. Well now, as you can appreciate, that's got some practical implications, doesn't it? Let me just outline a couple of those for you. First of all, the gospel needs to be proclaimed to every ethnic group under heaven. Jesus makes that very clear. The end cannot come until the gospel has been proclaimed to all nations. Then the end will come. And that's why many Christians and many Christian organizations have been actively involved since the early days of the church then in obeying the great commission to go out and make disciples of all nations. The end cannot come until every group has been reached. And here's the reason, God cannot come in judgment until every people group in the world has had an opportunity to hear the gospel and to either accept it or reject it. That has driven the work of missions for many, many centuries. That's why people have gone out on a limb, died in the mission field in many cases, because they have wanted to be faithful to the great commission. It may surprise you that as of the present moment, there are still 6,883 people groups who are classified as having been unreached by the gospel. And by unreached, that means there is not a significant Christian presence among those people to enable them to build Christian community. That can actually be a presence and a testimony to the nations. So the gospel needs to be proclaimed to all nations on the day of judgment. Here's a very important thing to understand. On the day of judgment, when people are going to be judged by what they've done with Jesus, it's important not only that justice be done, but that justice be seen to be done. And so the Lord Jesus is holding off His return until every tribe, tongue, and nation will have had an opportunity to say yes to Jesus or to reject Him. Secondly, as the gospel is proclaimed, not only will there be instances in which many individuals of a certain people group respond to the gospel, there will be instances when whole people groups, when whole nations respond to the reality of the gospel. As Sunday, I think it was, I talked to you about the Karen people that Don Richardson talks about in eternity in their hearts, how for hundreds and hundreds of years they had a prophetic indication that the gospel would come to them by a white person from the West in a boat carrying the book of good news. And how when George Boardman and other missionaries with him in the middle of the 1800s came to proclaim the gospel to them, scores and scores of people converted and coming to faith in Jesus Christ. And this past week, as I was thinking about this a little bit, the nation of Armenia came to mind, the first official Christian nation in history. And it's a fascinating story. Let me take just a few moments and walk you through it because it is an incredible example of how God has been at work in that people group. Armenia is somewhere northeast of Turkey and a very ancient people, evangelized in the late two hundreds of our era by an apostle, an evangelist called Gregory. And Gregory has a very interesting history. He's the patron saint of Armenia to this day. He wasn't the first to bring the gospel to this people, but the first to make a significant impact. His father had assassinated the king of Armenia, got caught, put to death. Young Gregory was dragged out of there, escaped, was led to Christian community and came to faith and when he heard that his father had killed the king, he decided to make atonement for his father's sins by approaching the murdered king's son, Tiritides, to offer his services to him. And so he began to work with Tiritides and had a great relationship with him until Gregory refused to bow to one of the idol gods that Tiritides was serving. Tiritides was furious, tormented him, tortured him, tried to get him to recant. Nothing worked. In the middle of that, somebody came to him and told him that Gregory's father had murdered his father and that did it right there and then. So he took Gregory, so the story goes, and it has almost mythical overtones, so there are elements of this story that are very hard to verify, except that we know Gregory was a real person and made a real impact on the nation of Armenia. So he dumped Gregory into this pit full of snakes and dead people's bones and he didn't think he'd live there for very long, except so the story goes, God came to a woman in a dream and told her to periodically bake bread and presumably drink and throw it into this hole. So Gregory stayed alive for 13 years in this pit. Now in the meantime, when the story gets even more bizarre, a woman by the name of Ripsome arrived in Armenia, a beautiful Christian virgin who escaped the Roman Emperor's affection and was going to be forced into marriage with Diocletian and Pterodactyls took a liking to this girl and wanted to marry her. Well, she had no such intention and in the power of the Holy Spirit, she fought this dude off, beat him all over the place. So the story goes and escaped. So he went after her and she got caught and she got executed. And not only did she get executed, but so did her spiritual supervisor and 35 other virgins who were part of that community of faith. Well, in the meantime, this king who was both furious and love or lust struck is mourning her death, mourned her death for six days, decided to go hunting and in a story, a close parallel to Nebuchadnezzar many years earlier, went absolutely stark-raving man and ended up outside of the city, just totally out of his mind. Well, his sister received a revelation in a dream that the king needed to get Gregory to pray for him while everybody thought Gregory is dead until somebody went to check and discovered that Gregory was still very much alive in the bottom of his pit. So they hauled him out of there, fixed him up, sent him to the king. He knelt in prayer, prayed for the king, and his insanity left like that and Pterodides repented of his sin, gave his life to Christ, and now created an environment where Gregory could build churches and preach the gospel and hundreds of thousands of people came to faith. Gregory himself baptized 190,000 people in the rest of his lifetime. And in the year 301, 24 years before Constantine declared the Roman Empire so-called Christian, Armenia declared itself a Christian nation. And today, as I said, Gregory is celebrated in that country as the patron saint. Scott Latterette, famous historian, calls the Armenian church an instance of what was to be seen again and again by a group adoption of the Christian faith engineered by accepted leaders and issuing in an ecclesiastical structure which became identified with a particular people, state, or nation. So there you have an instance where a nation comes to faith. Doesn't mean that everybody in the nation became a Christian, but it meant that the structures of the nation remained Christian. And from that day to this, the Armenian Christian presence has remained powerfully alive even in the midst of incredible genocide when in the first part of this century the Turks killed a million and a half of them. And that genocide still has not been acknowledged by the Turks as having happened historically, but it is a strong collective memory of the people who come out of that tradition. So the gospel has to be proclaimed to all nations, to every ethnic group. As the gospel is proclaimed as a testimony to the nations, every so often there will be whole people groups that will yield to the authority of Jesus. That's again one of the signposts of the kingdom that one day all the nations are going to honor Jesus and then as both individuals and nations become followers of Christ, then there will always be that inevitable clash of the kingdoms. Earlier on in this passage here's what Jesus says, "You will be handed over to be persecuted and to be put to death and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved." Teretides himself, interestingly enough, having converted to Christ, became a martyr to the faith when he was poisoned by the pagan members of his own court and you've got example upon example of that in the course of history where when God establishes his kingdom and when God makes a kingdom presence, then the nations of the world rise in rebellion and they want to destroy it even as Cain many years ago wanted to destroy Abel because the world who fights so hard for its place can't tolerate the presence of God's people who receive the kingdom. I mean, you've got to appreciate this from a worldly point of view. Here you are working your butt off to try to get somewhere and you want to be rewarded for who you are and for what you've got and then along comes the gospel of the kingdom and says, "It doesn't count for diddly squad." All that matters is do you have a heart that is humble before God and the prodigal son who squandered his father's living is the one who receives the father's blessing and the elder brother who worked from early morning to late at night. He ended up missing out on the blessing because he couldn't tolerate the perceived sense of injustice. Again, one of the tragic stories out of Kenya this past week was that church where people had taken refuge. You heard the story perhaps, they set fire to it and dozens of people burned to death at the hands of a mob and that has happened throughout the course of history and it's going to happen increasingly as the age gets ready for its final judgment and its final condemnation. There are questions that people often ask then when they hear those kinds of stories. Why doesn't God intervene? Have you ever asked yourself that question? I mean, why is life so cheap and why in those instances does God not protect his people like he did Daniel's friends in the fiery furnace? Well, I can think of two reasons and they're very important to understand. Remember what I said about what the nations are judged by. Nations are judged by their rebellion against God and their rejection of God's people. And one of the reasons people are allowed to do what they do is because God is fulfilling the measure of their sin so that when judgment comes, there will not be any question in anybody's mind that God is a God of justice and that people are receiving the due reward of their sin. Here's how the apostle Paul puts it. He says, "For you brothers became imitators of God's churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus. You suffered from your own countrymen, the same things those churches suffered from the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to all men in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved." And then verse 16, this is 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, "In this way, they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last." The Bible always talks about the measure of sin being fulfilled and when people set their minds in rejection of God and of Christ, He lets them go. They become nastier and nastier and if they continue to reject God's overtures and they refuse to repent, He gives them over to their sin until they become, in the public expression of their lives, utterly and totally degenerate. And by the persecution of those who are the children of God, are demonstrating for all the world to see how they really feel about God. So that by the time judgment comes around, nobody's going to say, "Oh, these poor people, why isn't God treating them nicer?" No, everybody will know that they are deserving of what they get. Understand that? It's very important to understand because you don't understand Christian history and why God doesn't step into the picture unless you understand that He uses the Christian community to show the sin that is resident in the hearts of men and women who reject the gospel of Jesus. And the second reason has to do with the church. God uses the world to purify the church. I've often said you cannot learn how to love your enemies unless you've got enemies to love. And if we're to be conformed to the image of Christ and we're going to be followers of Him, then there will at least be times in each of our lives where people reject us for no other reason than the name of Jesus. I want to tell you something. If I look back over the years of pastoring, I can point to innumerable individuals who by any biblical standard are some of the loveliest Christians that I have known. Humble, contrite spirit, they put their lives on the line for Jesus and for other people. They open their hearts and their homes and their wallets and you think the whole blue and world would just love them. But you know, in instance after instance, there have been stories where an irrational hatred has come upon people from family or friends or from community that was geared at undermining their lives. They began looking at those lives through big magnifying glasses and they began to try to find every possible error in their lives to throw stones. And you say, "Where in the world does it come from?" Well, it comes from the fact that light and darkness cannot coexist. And the Lord knows none of us is perfect and there's plenty of reasons why we could crucify. But even if like Jesus, you're perfect, in fact, the more nearly perfect you are, the more there will be people around you who point fingers and you say, "Who do you think you are?" And if you've ever been in that kind of situation, then you say to yourself, "How can people misjudge me so badly? How can people be so nasty? And why would they want to hurt me in that way?" Well, it's because the Lord is revealing what lies in their hearts and He is also using that to teach us how to love our enemy and how to be ready for the return of Jesus. Because you see, when the end of history comes and God shares Christ's authority with His people, then He doesn't want a repeat of what happened to Adam and Eve, does He? He doesn't want us to occupy positions of authority in God's eternal kingdom if there's left in us a vestige of self-interest or self-power or self-glorification. Why do you think Jesus was given the name above every name? Why could God the Father trust the whole universe to the hands of Jesus? I'll tell you why. Because He demonstrated in His death a perfect attitude of servanthood to God and to people. And if you're going to give anybody authority to run the kingdom, you're going to give it to somebody who shares the character and the nature of God and who can be trusted to rule it in God's way for God's eternal glory. You and I, we're going to share His glory, we're going to sit with Him on thrones. I have no idea what that looks like. It's hard enough to manage my own life, let alone the whole universe. But those are the promises of Scripture. And so when God puts pressure on us, as sometimes He does, and He flushes out these things, it's to help us conform to the image of Jesus. So that by the time the curtain falls in history, as we often say, He can trust us with whatever authority that He decides to give us for all eternity. Am I making sense? Does this make sense to you? Because a lot of the Christian life does not make sense unless you see that we are crown princes and crown princesses who are being trained for the kingdom that is to come. Will we often fail in the here and now? You bet your bottom dollar we will. But God in Christ is gracious and He is moving us forward to that day when He comes back for a bride which is pure and spotless through faith in Jesus and ready to sit at His side forever in the kingdom of our God. That's our challenge. That's what we're called to. And that's the message we're invited to share with all the nations. Stand with me for prayer. Father, you could easily have used the angels to proclaim the gospel to the nations and they probably would have done a better job of it than we do. But you have chosen to use us because Lord, as children with a father, you want us to share with you in the joy of building your kingdom. We're not always very good at that. We're often consumed by our own need, our own pain and our own worries and Lord, certainly we're not all called to go out as missionaries to the nations. But we pray tonight that you help us to understand the big picture and how you have commissioned the church to be a testimony to the nations and that one day all the nations will bow before you. And so to that end, help us to be faithful. Help us to let our light shine with family and friends and with neighbors. Help us to understand that your claim lies on all of society all around us and that our nation too will be judged ultimately by what it does with you and those who represent you. So Lord make our lives winsome and wholesome and help us to labor while it is still day. For your word says the night is coming when no man can work. [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:40:31.520; remove through 00:42:51.000] We'll be [CUT] careful to give you glory in Jesus' name, amen. We will cross every border, go wide every door, join our hearts across a nation, we'll proclaim Jesus' name. We will cross every border, go wide every door, join our hearts across a nation, we'll proclaim Jesus' name. We will cross every border, go wide every door, join our hearts across a nation, we'll proclaim Jesus' name. We will cross every border, go wide every door, join our hearts across a nation, we'll proclaim Jesus' name. We will cross every border, go wide every door, join our hearts across a nation, we'll proclaim Jesus' name. We will cross every border, go wide every door, join our hearts across a nation, we'll proclaim Jesus' name. We will cross every border, go wide every door, join our hearts across a nation, we'll proclaim Jesus' name. We will cross every border, go wide every door, join our hearts across a nation, we'll proclaim Jesus' name. We will cross every border, go wide every door, join our hearts across a nation, we'll proclaim Jesus' name. We will cross every border, go wide every door, join our hearts across a nation, we'll proclaim Jesus' name. Still our eyes shall see his glory, the Lamb of Risen Lord, when he received from every nation, his blood, the pride, his praise, the glory, and we'll proclaim Jesus' name. We shall proclaim Jesus' name. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:42:51.000; resume after this marked segment]