Missions & the World

God came to Abram with a promise so large it would take the rest of scripture to unfold. Leave your country, your people, your father's household. Go to a land I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you. I will make your name great.

But the promise didn't stop with Abram. "You will be a blessing," God said. "All peoples on earth will be blessed through you." From the first moment God called one man to follow Him, the scope was universal. The particularity was always in service of the universal. God chose Abram so that Abram could become the channel through which every family of the earth would be reached.

Paul quotes this promise in Galatians and says this was the gospel announced in advance to Abraham — that in him all nations would be blessed. The Abrahamic blessing was always a missions text. The river that started with one old man in Ur was always flowing toward the whole world.

You are a beneficiary of that blessing. You are also a carrier of it — blessed so that others might come to know the God who blesses.

The church at Antioch had remarkable leadership: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen, and Saul. Diverse, gifted, established. While they were worshiping and fasting, the Holy Spirit spoke: "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them."

They sent them off. The church that had just found its footing sent away two of its strongest leaders — because the Spirit said the work lay elsewhere. In Pisidian Antioch, Paul preached in the synagogue, and when the Gentiles heard the good news about Jesus, they began begging Paul to speak more. The following Sabbath, almost the whole city gathered.

When the Jewish leaders objected with jealousy, Paul turned directly to the Gentiles: "We had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles. For this is what the Lord has commanded us: 'I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.'"

When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord. The ways of God were becoming known — on earth, among all nations, exactly as the Psalmist had prayed.

Cornelius was a Roman centurion — a Gentile, a soldier of the occupying force — who feared God and prayed and gave generously to the poor. God sent an angel to him with a message: go get Peter. At the same moment, God gave Peter a vision: a sheet descending from heaven filled with all kinds of animals, and a voice saying "Kill and eat." Peter refused — "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean." The voice replied: "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean."

Three times. Then the men from Cornelius arrived.

Peter went with them. When he arrived, Cornelius had gathered his household and relatives and close friends. Peter spoke to them about Jesus — and before he had even finished speaking, the Holy Spirit fell on everyone who heard the word. The Jewish believers who had come with Peter were astonished: the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on Gentiles.

God had to give Peter a vision to break down his own borders. The salvation that was always meant for all nations sometimes runs into the walls we build — and God is patient enough to give us the vision that dismantles them.