The Great Commission is Specific

The following is a lightly edited transcript provided by a transcription service. Please check the video before quoting.

David Platt on the Great Commission

Hey breakaway, it is good to be together with you this way. I was so looking forward to being back on campus there at an M. The first time would’ve been at a breakaway in person. I am so just grateful for God’s grace and this ministry and specifically what God is doing on the a and m campus and has been doing for years, but it’s doing right now.

I want to be very specific in what I’m going to pray for in just a moment and then the time we’re going to have together. I want to specifically challenge every follower of Christ at a and m involved in the breakaway.

To whatever extent you’re involved in breakaway other churches I want to challenge you if you are a follower of Jesus before you move on to the next stage in your life after college. I want to challenge you to spend at least a summer, if not a semester or a year or two sharing and spreading the gospel somewhere in the world where the gospel has never gone.

That’s specifically as I’ve prayed about this time together tonight. That’s what I’m praying God will do, that God will work in your heart in the next few minutes in a way that would cause you to spend either a summer or semester or a year or two spreading the gospel somewhere in the world where it hasn’t yet gone.

So let me pray toward that end. God, obviously this is not ideal or what was planned for. I’m so looking forward to being in person at the breakaway. I praise you for what you’re doing in through this ministry and through churches all across College Station and I see, oh God, the potential for the spread of your gospel to the nations, even just from that campus, even just from the students who are gathered in this setting virtually right now.

So God, I pray, please, please speak by the power of Your Spirit through your word in the next few minutes, and I pray that you would cause just a movement to resound from your glory among the nations, specifically among people who’ve never heard the gospel as a result of what you’re doing on this campus at a&m.

God, I pray that specifically tonight in the next few minutes, your spirit would speak in a way that would lead to students and others taking the gospel where it’s never been heard before as a result of what you do in the next few minutes. God please, I know only your spirit can do that. So please do that by your spirit through your word now. In Jesus name, I pray, amen.

Disciples of All Nations

Alright, so if you have a Bible, and I hope you or somebody around you does you’re going to look on with, let me invite you to open with me to Matthew chapter 28, Matthew chapter 28, and just to give you a little preview of how we’re going to approach the next few minutes.

What I want to do is I want to read this passage of scripture and then I want to put before you one statement, five truths, and three applications. So I know that’s like nine points in about 30 minutes, so we got a lot to cover, but I think they’re all really important. They all spring from this passage of scripture.

I’m going to put some of these things on the screen so that you can follow along maybe a little bit easier, but let’s start where we need to start with God’s word, a passage that if you’re a follower of Jesus, have been following Jesus for very long, we’re likely very familiar to you known as the Great Commission.

Jesus came and said to them, them being his disciples, 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’m with you always to the end of the age.

To Be a Disciple of Jesus

Okay? So based on these words from Jesus, one statement, let’s start here. To be a disciple of Jesus is to let his global cause dictate everything you think, desire, and do. So that’s the statement.

And I started with just saying, alright, to be a disciple of Jesus, what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus? Because I think in our day we’ve diluted what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Just say some words, pray a prayer, and believe certain things, you’re a follower of Jesus, but even the demons, beliefs, and certain true things about Jesus, they’re not followers of Jesus.

Nowhere in scripture do we see, just say certain words and you’re a follower of Jesus. What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus? Matthew chapter 28, verse 18 says, that to be a disciple of Jesus is to let his global cause.

So he’s saying to his disciples, to his followers, go and make disciples of all the nations to let this global cause dictate everything you think and you desire and you do. And to let this commission drive you.

And by dictating everything you think, desire to do everything from what you study, to what job you explore, to who you date, who you marry, how you live, how you view possessions, how you spend your time on that campus and the days to come.

All of it is dictated by, driven by the global cause of Jesus to follow Jesus is to let his global cause dictate everything you think, desire, and do. So I’m going to come back to that statement at the end, but let me dive into these five truths. So they’re a little wordy. So like I said, I’ll put ’em up here on the screen.

Spread God Among All Nations

So here’s the first one, the end goal of God is his glory known and enjoyed among all the nations. So that’s the first truth, the end goal of God. So what is driving in a sense, God, it’s not an outside force driving God, it’s driven from within himself, but the goal of God is his glory known and enjoyed among all the nations.

So we could spend these next few minutes just walking from cover to cover in the Bible to see this, to see how from the beginning of creation, God created man and woman in his image for the display of his glory in the world. And he said, multiply throughout the world, fill the earth with my glory.

And then we could walk all the way through scripture and we could see God’s goal, his glory, being known and enjoyed among all the nations. I just finished reading through a couple of months ago, the Psalms in my Bible reading each day the Psalms, what a unique book.

Think about it, the 150 Psal is given to us by God for his own glory so that we might enjoy praising him. Imagine my wife and I have been married for 20 years. Imagine me going to my wife on our anniversary and saying, I have a gift for you. I have written you 150 songs that talk about how great I am in all of my different attributes, and all my different characteristics, how great I am, and I wanted to give them to you as a gift.

I want to invite you to tell them to me. If you want, you can even put into music, sing them to me and it’ll bring such joy to your heart. Lemme tell you what gift I’m not giving my wife, but this is what God has given us. He’s given us a book of Psalms, specifically 150 Psalms, talking about how great he is that we might know and enjoy his glory.

And it’s right for him to do that because he is glorious in all of his attributes and all of his characteristics. He is infinitely beautiful and majestic and mighty and merciful and loving all of these attributes that make up his glory and we are designed to know and enjoy him.

This is what you were created for, I was created to know and enjoy God, to walk with God. And what an amazing thought that you and I have invited him into a relationship with the God of the universe to know him personally and enjoy him forever. And not just you and me, but the end goal of God is his glory known and enjoyed among all the nations.

So if we had time, we’d go to the very end of the Bible and see in Revelation chapter five, verses nine and 10, revelation chapter seven, verses nine and 10, where God is leading all history, all of history is leading toward the day when every nation, tribe, tongue, and people will gather around the throne of God and give him glory and praise him for his salvation, praise him for his love.

And that’s going to be the end of history because God has designed it that way. Everything is leading to that point, the glory of God being known and enjoyed among all nations. So that’s the end goal of God from cover to cover in scripture, to be known and enjoyed among all the nations.

And I should add one other thing before we move on from this truth. When we talk about nations here, don’t just think of geopolitical entities we think of countries today like 200 or so United Nations because that’s not what the Bible means when it talks about nations in Revelation or nations in Matthew chapter 28.

Instead, that word for nations is ethnic for which we get ethnic or ethnic groups or sometimes people groups and trust. We realize there are many more ethnic groups than there are geopolitical entities like nations like 200 or so United Nations.

There are thousands, some say over 11,000, some say over 16,000. Depends on how exactly you’re counting or classifying them. Regardless, there are thousands of distinct ethnic groups in the world, people groups who share common language and cultural characteristics. And you realize this on your campus, there are so many different ethnic groups.

God’s Goal Among All Nations

I live in metro, Washington, DC we have so many different ethnic groups in our church, in our city. You go to a nation like India, there are so many different ethnic groups, people, and groups spread out across India.

So when we hear this end goal of God is his glory known and enjoyed among all the nations, don’t just think of countries think of all the distinct people groups in the world, every type of person, God’s goal is to be known and enjoyed among all of them. And that’s what Revelation chapter seven is saying.

Every nation, tribe, tongue, and people gathered around his throne enjoying his glory. So that’s the end goal of God that leads to the second truth. If that’s the end goal of God, then the end goal of every Christian and every church should be the spread of God’s glory among all nations.

So if God’s goal in history is for every nation, tribe, tongue, and people to glorify him, and enjoy him, and if we are worshipers of God and we are followers of Jesus, then that should be our goal too. Some just ask the question before this gathering right now, would you have said, my goal in life is the spread of God’s glory among all the nations?

If not, and that is God’s goal, then I would just ask, whose goal needs to change? If this is the goal of God, then this should be the goal. Must be the goal of every single person who worships God, who knows God, who follows God.

So this is for all of us. I remember distinctly where I was sitting at a conference. It was a breakout session of a conference when I was in college, went to the University of Georgia and I’m at this conference sitting in a small breakout session.

And when we sit down, the guy who’s leading it says, let’s open up to Genesis. For the next hour, he just welcomed from Genesis to Revelation and showed that God’s goals, his glory, were known and enjoyed among all the nations. And I remember sitting there at the end, people kind of get up, start walking out, and I just remember sitting there with my jaw on the ground thinking this changes everything.

Let God’s Goals Be Yours

If this is God’s goal, then this must be my goal. It was a moment that totally shifted the trajectory of my life. I’d been a follower of Jesus for a long time. I’d somehow missed this was the goal of God and I realized everything, everything changes based on this.

And so I ended up in the days to come, I had already at that point, I was already thinking about going to seminary and being in vocational ministry. And so I started thinking, okay, well that means that I’m supposed to be a missionary.

And I remember my wife and I in seminary praying through, okay, God’s passion, his goal is for his glory in all nations. There are all these people groups, ethnic groups that have little to no knowledge of the gospel. We’ll talk about that more in a second. Well, then it’s a no-brainer. We got to go there and make his glory known.

We need to move as missionaries there. And I remember one week the president of a large missions organization, the International Mission Board, his name at that time was Jerry Rankin who was leading the International Mission Board.

He was coming to our campus to speak and I had been asked to take him to breakfast. And so the night before I told my wife, I said, I’m taking the president of the International Mission Board to breakfast tomorrow. I’m going to tell him we’re ready to go as missionaries. Is that okay with you? And my wife was like, yes, that’s okay.

We’ve obviously been talking about this a ton, seeing it in God’s word, seeing the needs in the world. So I go to breakfast the next morning before we even sit down with our plates, I am just pouring out my heart to Dr. Rankin. And at the end, I was just like, I saw it. I see it in the world. I see the need in the world.

We’re ready to go as missionaries. He’s like, what do we do? And he looked back at me for about 60 seconds and encouraged me and what I had just said to him. And then he spent the rest of breakfast talking to me about the need for pastors to lead churches among places where the gospel has gone for the spread of the gospel where it hasn’t gone. And I was so confused.

I went home that night and my wife was like, how’d it go? What’s the plan? And I just looked at her. I said, I think the president of the International Missions Organization, I think he just talked me out of becoming a missionary, and my wife was disappointed in me.

I’d blown it or something. I messed up the interview. I was like, I don’t think I did anything wrong. But here’s what I’m so thankful for. That conversation with Dr. Rankin that day created a category in my mind that I didn’t think was there before looking back.

I don’t know why it wasn’t there, but it wasn’t there before. And here was the category. So there is a type of person who is passionate and zealous for the spread of God’s glory among all the nations, but who doesn’t become a missionary who moves for the spread of God’s glory among the nations to a place where the gospel hasn’t gone.

All Christians Are Missionaries

There’s a category for somebody who’s passionate about God’s glory among all the nations but doesn’t become a missionary. And then looking back, I started thinking, well, of course, there’s a category like that type of person. It’s called a Christian, right? Like a Christian. This isn’t just for missionaries.

Do you have the spirit of Christ in you, the spirit of God living in you because the spirit of God is passionate for the glory of God among the nations? And if the spirit of God lives in you, me, then we will be passionate for the glory of God’s name among all the nations. This isn’t just for missionaries, this is for every single one of us.

The end goal of every Christian in every church is the spread of God’s glory among all the nations. This is what should get us out of bed in the morning and drive to dictate all that we do in our lives day in and day out and the details of our lives and on the whole of our lives. If this is God’s goal, this is our goal.

So just then ask the question: is that goal evident in your life? Is it evident? Is this goal the spread of God’s glory among the nations? Is it evident in the way you pray? Is it evident in the way you give? Is it evident in the way you live on that campus? Is it evident in the way you dream about your future?

The end goal of every Christian, every church is the spread of God’s glory among all the nations. Now that leads to truth number three. The means for accomplishing this goal is the great commission we read in Matthew chapter 28, making disciples and multiplying churches among all the nations. So how do we make the glory of God known among all the nations?

What does that look like? That’s what Jesus is telling us in Matthew chapter 28, verse 19. He’s saying, go and make disciples, which makes sense. Think about it as disciples of Jesus, God is more and more glorified. The more and more we look like Jesus, the more I or you look like Jesus, think like Jesus, act like Jesus, speak like Jesus, love like Jesus.

The more our lives are conformed in the image of Jesus, the more God is glorified in our lives. So then how is God’s glory going to spread? Not just by us looking more like Jesus but us leading other people to look more like Jesus, leading other people to become disciples of Jesus. And the more disciples are made, the more God’s glory spreads and not just disciples made.

So put their multiplying churches because as disciples are made in new places, those disciples gather together in churches and the church is the display of God’s glory in Ephesians three 10 kinds of way in that place.

And so as disciples are made and churches multiply, the glory of God spreads. This is what the whole New Testament is about. Put a map up here on the screen just as one example. This is from Acts chapter 13. Look over here at the city of Antioch.

I’ll circle it on here, Antioch. So in Acts chapter 13, the Church of Antioch is worshiping and fasting and praying, and God’s spirit says, set apart from me, Saul or Paul and Barnabas to take the gospel where it’s not yet gone.

So there were all these Christians at Antioch, but there were other places where the gospel had not gone. So this pink arrow is them going out from Antioch and they went down here to Cyprus and they went north up into all these other places.

And in each of these places, you know what they’re doing. They’re making disciples, they’re leading people to follow Jesus and then they’re gathering them together in churches and then the kind of purplish blue arrows are them coming back and they came back to Antioch after all, after going all those places, making disciples, multiplying churches, they came back and strengthened those churches and then came back to kind of home base.

This is what the New Testament is all about. The spread of God’s glory into new places as more and more disciples are made churches are multiplied and the glory of God is spreading into those new places. Now, we’ll come back to this map in just a second because it wasn’t the only journey that Paul went on but get the picture.

The means for accomplishing this goal is the great commission making disciples and multiplying churches. That’s how the gospel will spread across your campus and whatever city you ever live in and in the world through disciples being made in churches being multiplied. Now that leads to truth number four.

The Great Commission is a Specific Command

The Great Commission is not a general command to make disciples and multiply churches among as many people as possible. Instead, the Great Commission is a specific command to make disciples and multiply churches among all the nations.

So that’s really, really important. Lemme say it again. The Great Commission is not just generally a command from Jesus to make disciples of multiplied churches among a lot of people. That’s not what we read in Matthew 28-19.

No, we read a specific command from Jesus. He said, make disciples and multiply churches among all nations, among all the ethnic groups, all the people groups in the world. And that’s exactly what happened after Acts chapter 13 and that first journey. So go back to that map for a second. So this was what we just looked at. Gospel being proclaimed, disciples being matrices are being multiplied in all these places.

Then once they get back to Antioch, that leads to a second trip where Paul again here at Antioch goes up and you’ll notice he starts going to all the places that he had been in before. So he’s going to places where disciples have already been made and churches have already been multiplied.

And then in Acts chapter 16 verses six through 10, Paul has a vision of a man from Macedonia saying, come over here and help us. And he concludes God was calling them to take the gospel to new places where the gospel had not gone.

So he starts going into places where the gospel hadn’t gone, and that’s what he’s doing all throughout here. He’s making disciples, multiplying churches, and new places where the gospel hadn’t gone. Then he makes his way down to Jerusalem where the gospel had started and then comes back up to Antioch.

Discipleship Must Be Spread

What’s interesting is that he sets the stage for his third journey where again, he goes out from Antioch, but you’ll notice on this map he doesn’t go to any new places. So he’s only going to places at this point where disciples have already been made and churches have already been planted.

And what’s interesting is when he gets to the city of Corinth right here, he’s on his way to Jerusalem because he’s taken an offering down to the church there. But he writes a letter, it’s in the New Testament, it’s called the book of Romans.

He wrote it from Corinth at this time. Do you know why? Well, let me show you this one other map. So again, here’s Antioch. Over here, there’s Jerusalem, here’s Corinth, and here is Rome. So why would Paul from Corinth write a letter to Rome when he’s headed to Jerusalem?

Well, if you read Romans chapter 15, you’ll hear him describe how there’s no more work for him to do in this region over here. Now he makes that statement. He says, there’s no more work for me to do here. Now did that mean everybody was a follower of Jesus in that area?

Like no way. What it meant was disciples had been made and the church had been multiplied in those places. He said, there’s no more work for me to do there. And so I’m writing to you in Rome because I want you to help me get the gospel to Spain because they haven’t heard the gospel over here.

He says, my ambition is to see Christ preach where he has not been named. So don’t miss it. Going back to this truth, the great commission was not just a general command to make disciples among a lot of people in one particular area.

The Great Commission was a specific command to keep moving on for the church to work together, to keep sending people out, to take the gospel where it hadn’t gone to all the nations, to all the people groups.

And that leads to a picture I want you to get of the world today that we live in. So look at this map with me. It’s called the progress of the gospel by a group of people. And what you’ll notice on this map is there are areas that are green and those areas that are green are areas where the gospel has gone and disciples have been made and churches have been planted and multiplied.

Obviously, that does not mean that in all those areas, everybody’s a follower of Jesus. We know that in the United States, we know where we live, no question, but by God’s grace, there are churches all around your campus, all around me, and metro Washington, DC by God’s grace, the gospel has come here, disciples have been made, churches have been planted, multiplied in these places.

The Presence of the Church

Then you see yellow on this map, yellow are aries, and Ello are areas of the world that are what’s called a more formative or nominal church. So basically there is some church presence, but it’s not very strong. So it’s particularly weak comparatively.

Either it’s a new church or used to be a strong church and now has faded big time. As you look in parts of Europe, for example, even to the point where you’ve got churches that are not proclaiming the gospel at all, and then you’ve got the red and those are places that are called unreached or least reached.

And what that means is very few disciples have been made and churches have been multiplied there to the point where most people in the Red have little to no interaction with a Father of Jesus or a church to the point where most people in the red have little to no access to the gospel. Like they’ve never heard the gospel, nobody’s ever told them the gospel and they make up estimates of about two to 3 billion people.

And what I want us to see is that we have been given a specific command to make disciples among all the nations. But what’s interesting is when North American churches and Christians talk about missions and do missions and give to missions, 90 plus percent of our resources go to places on this map that are green.

We do missions in Latin America, we do missions in Sub-Saharan Africa, and we give toward things in these areas. And it’s not that’s bad that that’s bad by any means.

We have brothers and sisters there that it is good to work alongside in all kinds of ways, but we are fooling ourselves if we think we’re being obedient to the great commission, but we’re still ignoring the places in the world with the least access to the gospel. And we have been given a command, like a command from Jesus to work together to get the gospel here.

And the illustration I would use is a picture, obviously, we’ve had all kinds of storms, hurricanes specifically this year. Tornado is spawning off from that. There’s obviously a big difference between a hurricane and a tornado. So a hurricane, it’s a large swath of land.

A tornado is much more selective. So picture a tornado. I mean a tornado can come through a community and hit this house or this neighborhood and then leave the one right next to it totally untouched.

But imagine a tornado came through and ravaged the area around you and just went neighborhood after neighborhood after neighborhood. Imagine you are in charge of rescue operations on the ground and you have a team you come to the first neighborhood you get to and you realize that there are more needs in that neighborhood that you and your team can even begin to address, can even begin to help and rescue.

You can’t rescue everybody there if you give all your energy to that. And then imagine there’s another neighborhood farther away where there’s a lot more people who need rescuing and then there’s another neighborhood even farther than that that’s in need of rescue.

But you start thinking, well, if I split up my team here, they’re going to lose time and try to travel to that other neighborhood that they could be using to save lives here. And imagine, you even hear that the neighborhood at the farthest distance away is actually rebelling against anybody who wants to come and bring rescue there. If you bring rescue to that neighborhood, try to help them, they’re going to oppose you.

They’re going to work against you. Well, if you’re using common sense in this picture, you’re saying, alright, we’re just going to focus right here. There’s so much need right here. Let’s just focus right here.

You’re not going to spend time losing time going to this other neighborhood or risking the lives of your team members going to a place where they don’t even want help. The only reason you would split up your team in different places is if your commanding officer told you that your team was responsible for bringing rescue to every single neighborhood.

And if your commanding officer told you that, then you’d split up your resources and you’d go and say, all right, there’s a ton of need here, but we can’t just stay here. We got to go there and there and there. This is the picture I want you to see. Our commanding officer, Jesus has told us, I want people rescued from every nation, every tribe, every people.

What that means is you and I, if we’re going to be obedient to the great commission and we’re going to give our lives spreading the glory of God among all the nations, that at some point somebody’s got to go here, God is calling his people to go here, or the gospel hasn’t yet gone or people have not heard the good news of how God loves them too so much that he sent his son to down a cross for them.

They could be forgiven of their sins, they could have eternal life in heaven. This is Romans chapter 10. If they don’t hear that, they can’t be saved. They need to hear the good news of God’s love in Christ and we have been commanded to take the gospel to them.

Are You Obeying the Great Commission?

So all that leads to truth number five, based on all four of these truths that if we are not living like you and I as followers of Jesus, if we’re not living and dying to spread God’s glory among all the nations, then we are disobeying the great commission and disregarding the goal of God.

If you and I are not living and dying to spread God’s glory among all the nation, then we are disobeying the great commission and disregarding the goal of God. In other words, obedience to the great commission and living for the glory of God involves spending our lives for the spread of God’s story among all nations. If we would realize these five truths that I trust are crystal clear in God’s word, it would change everything about the trajectory of our lives,

Our church’s ministry. It would change everything about our days. Say, what do you mean practically? Okay, what does that mean? Because didn’t you say not everybody’s going to move overseas to these places?

So what does this mean to live and die for the spread of God’s glory among all the nations? So here are the three practical applications I want to give you. There’s so much we can dive into here, but we’ll just hit ’em quick, but just, okay, what do I do with this one?

Exhort, you pray passionately for God’s glory among all nations. Spend time each day before God in prayer for the spread of his glory among all the nations I would commend to you unreached of the day.

It’s an app, a simple app by Joshua Project unreached of the day. Just search for an unreachable apple. It’s 60 seconds a day just you open up that app and just read like today like the Ryan people in India, almost a million of them, no followers of Jesus among them.

Pray for Muslims

God, pray, we pray together even right now for the spread of the gospel among the Muslim prayer, God please send laborers to go to the Muslims. God, please open their eyes to your salvation. We know we know Revelation chapter five, revelation chapter seven, the RA people are going to be gathered around your throne on that day.

So bring it about God, send people to go. Here’s our lives, here’s our churches, here’s our families. Use us for our future, use us together to make your glory known among you. Just pray that every day, day in and day out, it’ll totally change your heart.

It’ll totally change your perspective on the world. Pray passionately for God’s glory among all nations. Second, give sacrificially for God’s glory among all nations. So we have been placed in one of the wealthiest places, not just on the earth in the history of the world.

So how do we use the resources we’ve been given? And I know you don’t always feel very wealthy as a college student, but the fact that you’re a college student makes you very wealthy like the education that you’re able to get that I was able to get like’s a gift of God’s grace.

And the fact that we have clean water and food and shelter over our heads means of transportation, even if it’s public, and access to medical care, sets us apart. So anyway, how can we use the grace God has given us for the spread of his glory among the nations, not to hoard more for ourselves, but to spend more of ourselves for the spread of God’s glory among the nations?

It changes the way we look at possessions, give sacrificially, and then go boldly. So what do they mean? What do you mean by going boldly for God’s glory among all nations? I would encourage you based on what we’ve just read from Jesus, to make disciples wherever you live making disciples, don’t miss it. Spread of God’s glory among all the nations. That’s the goal of God.

Our Goal is to Make Disciples

That’s the goal of our lives. How do you do that? Make disciples. So do that right where you are on that campus. Lead people to Jesus. Show people how to follow Jesus. Let the glory of God spread on that campus.

And I would even add the nations, particularly other unreached nations, particularly the unreached. So what I mean by that is there are so many people on your campus whom God has brought from the nations, even specifically places where the gospel is not yet gone, he’s brought him to you.

So opening our eyes like this is one of the things I love about living in Washington DC but I think that on every college campus, there are so many opportunities to reach the nations right here. So make disciples of the nations, particularly those who are from places where the gospels have not yet gone.

And then for the nation’s meaning as you lead people to Jesus and help them follow Jesus and encourage them to live for the spread of God’s glory among the nations. So make disciples wherever we live and make disciples wherever God leads. So just lay down your life and say, God, how do you want to use me?

My life for your glory among the nations. I’ll put here short-term, midterm, long-term, short-term, maybe there’s an opportunity to go for a week or two, somewhere in the world where the gospel’s not yet gone, an opportunity to go midterm. So this is what is specifically challenging. I say in our church, every single college student, unless God tells you otherwise, spend a summer, a semester, a year or two, somewhere in the world where the gospel hasn’t gone.

What a unique opportunity we have to do that now in a way that will shape the trajectory of our lives in the future. Maybe God will use that to lead us to move somewhere else in the world or maybe he’ll lead us back here to work here and to work with a totally different perspective on the world to give and to pray accordingly.

So midterm may lead to long-term, maybe not, but just explore the avenues for what that looks like wherever God leads, and I’ll put this as our vocation or through our vocation we could talk about there. But for some people, God will call to pack their bags and sell everything they have quit their jobs, and move overseas as missionaries.

So God will call some people to do that. God will call other people to keep their jobs, not leave their jobs for the spread of God’s glory, mind the nations, but leverage their jobs for the spread of God’s glory among the nations.

You Can Always Study the Bible

Think about it, I’ll give you an example. One nursing student graduates with a nursing degree and instead of looking for jobs right around her, she starts looking for jobs in places in the world where the gospel hasn’t gone.

She ends up getting a job in the heart of the Middle East in this 99.9% Muslim country and she’s working in a significant hospital in a significant city in the heart of this country. And she right now has a Bible study in her office every single week with Muslims where she’s sharing the gospel and nobody stops her.

Do you know why? Because she’s really good at nursing. She’s become the head of nursing in this hospital. Just think as I have prayed for you, obviously, I don’t know if all of you are listening right now, but you have gifts, you have skills, you have education, and you have degrees that are, will open doors for the spread of God’s glory among the nations to go places where I as a pastor can’t go put the pastor on a visa application to a lot of countries.

You’re not getting in, but engineer, teacher, nurse, doctor, go on and on and on. There are all kinds of ways that God will open up doors for the spread of his glory among the nations when we say, here’s my life. Use it all toward this end. It’s like being a disciple of Jesus.

It’s what it means to be a follower of Jesus, not just to go through a nominal routine in your life till you get to heaven. Don’t settle for that. To be a disciple of Jesus is to let his global cause dictate everything you think, desire, and do what you study, what you look for in a career, and what you look for in a spouse.

Like, don’t date somebody who’s not a disciple of Jesus like this. Don’t date somebody for whom the global cause of Christ is not dictating everything they think and desire and do and don’t join your life with somebody who’s not on the same page like this. You say, well, who am I going to date then?

Well, everybody, all you guys start doing this and date each other and marry each other. Make disciples of the nations like let the global cause of Christ dictate everything you think and desire and do.

Antioch in Jesursulum

I’ll close with this. Remember that map I showed you with Antioch over there in Jerusalem and Corinth and Rome? If you look at this map, there’s like a little bit of yellow on the right over near Antioch in Jerusalem and right around Rome.

That yellow represents the regions that were known to contain Christians at the beginning of Paul’s ministry. So when Acts 13 happened, these were the places in the world where they were Christians, everywhere else was unreached, including Corinth. Now, in just a second I want to show you a map that shows the regions known to contain Christians at the end of Paul’s life. I just want you to see if you can tell the difference. He let the global cause of Christ dictate everything he did. Did it have any effect?

You see that yellow light up and all the places he had gone in, and I’m not saying Paul was the only one living for the spread of the gospel, but I would say Paul had a very significant impact on this map. But you’ll notice what’s not yellow, Spain over there. Paul eventually made it to Rome, but not the way he planned. He made it in chains. He was imprisoned. And for all we know he never got to Spain. The gospel didn’t get to Spain before he died.

So does that mean he failed? Well, before we come to that conclusion, I want to show you one more map that’ll show you the regions known to contain Christians within two short centuries after Paul’s death. Just want you to see if you can tell the difference. Look at this map. Again, I am not saying Paul was the only one who impacted this map, but I’m saying.

Don’t underestimate for a second what God will do through your life when it is abandoned to his global cause for his glory to be known and enjoyed through your life among more and more and more people and Peoples, like entire people groups.

So that’s the question I leave you with, what kind of impact you’re going to have on this map. Specifically, I want to say to you, that I will stay as pastor in our church unless God tells you otherwise based on what we’ve just seen in his word, would you commit tonight or at least just say tonight?

Okay, yes. God, if you want me to, and I’m going to work toward this unless you stop me from spending at least a summer, if not a semester or a year or two, somewhere in the world where the gospel’s not yet gone and ultimately, God, here’s my life. Pray that your global cause would drive me.