Tag Archives: Missions
Song for the Nations
This is the first week of several that we at Grace Bible Chapel celebrate the Gospel advance around the world.
The Highest Motive for Missions
If God desires every knee to bow to Jesus and every tongue to confess Him, so should we. We should be ‘jealous’ for the honor of His name—troubled when it remains unknown, hurt when it is ignored, indignant when it is blasphemed, and all the time anxious and determined that it shall be given the honor and glory which are due to it.
The highest of all missionary motives is neither obedience to the Great Commission (important as that is), nor love for sinners who are alienated and perishing (strong as that incentive is, especially when we contemplate the wrath of God), but rather zeal—burning and passionate zeal—for the glory of Jesus Christ.
Only one imperialism is Christian, and that is concern for His Imperial Majesty Jesus Christ, and for the glory of his empire or kingdom. Before this supreme goal of the Christian mission, all unworthy motives wither and die.
John Stott, The Message of Romans (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1994), 53.
The Worst Church
The Church is worse than as ‘sounding brass’, it is as silent brass and an untinkling cymbal, unless the individuals that belong to it recognise God’s meaning in making them His children, and do their best to fulfill it. ‘Ye are my witnesses,’ saith the Lord. You are put into the witness-box; see that you speak out when you are there.
Never a Distinction Between Home and Foreign Missions
God wanted all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. To that end Jesus gave Himself to provide a salvation from all sin for all men. In that He died for one, He died for all. Contrary to our superficial thinking, there never was a distinction in His mind between home and foreign missions. To Jesus it was all world evangelism.
Robert E. Coleman, The Master Plan of Evangelism (Grand Rapids: Baker Publishing Group, 2010), 18.
The Test of Our Missionary Resolve
There is no better test of our spiritual state and condition than our missionary zeal, our concern for lost souls. That is always the thing that divides people who are just theoretical and intellectual Christians from those who have a living and a vital spiritual life.
The Beginning of Mission
Mission begins with a kind of explosion of joy. The news that the rejected and crucified Jesus is alive is something that cannot possibly be suppressed. It must be told. Who could be silent about such a fact?
The mission of the Church in the pages of the New Testament is like the fallout from a vast explosion, a radioactive fallout which is not lethal but life-giving.
How Is the Church To Be Evangelistic?
In the church today the tendency is to look at the world all the time and to see the tragedy of the world. That is perfectly right, of course; the church is to be evangelistic. But the question is, how is the church to be evangelistic? And I contend that what the New Testament itself tells us, is that the church is most successful evangelistically when she herself is as she ought to be. Why are the masses of the people outside of the church? I do not hesitate to say that the reason is that they fail to see in us anything that attracts them, anything that creates within them a desire to receive what we have, or anything that rebukes them and condemns them for their way of living. Not that we should necessarily put that into words, but it should be seen.
Martin Lloyd-Jones in sermon titled The Possibilities of the Christian Life
Evangelism Is about Obedience
The Christian evangelist is primarily concerned with evoking obedience to Jesus Christ. The teachers of other religions are concerned with winning acceptance for the truths they teach.
D. T. Niles, The Preacher’s Task and the Stone of Stumbling, p. 98
A Monumental Revelation
In the Great Commission, we find Jesus’ monumental revelation to His followers — and through them to the world — of the mission for world blessing that God has had in store from the beginning: God’s people knowing and enjoying Him in Jesus and going and telling all the nations about Him.
(David Mathis in John Piper, A Holy Ambition (Minneapolis: Desiring God, 2011), 28.
Life Is Worship 