Mark 16:15 says, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.”
Let me put that into a little bit of perspective. In the time of Christ, there were approximately 300 million people on earth according to my internet sources. Today there are around 8 billion. In Jesus day, the church began with about 120 believers and then exploded to over 3000 on the day of Pentecost. Still, not a huge number in comparison to those who claim to know Christ today.
Add to that the extreme limitations of their time; worldwide travel was painfully slow and extremely dangerous, there were no means of mass communication, and almost every governmental authority sought to exterminate them from the face of the earth. Yet within a generation, the world had heard of Jesus Christ.
Today, we have the ability to communicate with the entire planet in real time, we can be on the other side of the world in a matter of hours, and Christianity is at least tolerated in the vast majority of nations. Add to that the fact that Christians, at least American Christians, have vast resources at our disposal in order to spread the Gospel and the case is clear, we have a much easier task than those who originally received this command.
So why are we struggling so to get it done? I see at least three reasons:
1. The "GO YE…Who Me?” Problem – Too many Christians today see their relationship with Jesus Christ as a matter of convenience or a simple necessity in order to avoid hell. They don’t understand that if Jesus is Lord, then that demands that we obey him. He said, “If you love me, then keep my commandments.” If we don’t see ourselves included in the “Go ye” then we won’t have a passion to see the world come to know Christ.
2. The “Preach the Gospel” Problem – Really this is a two-fold problem. First, most Christians have limited the command to preach to apply only to ‘preachers.’ That allows them to believe that this preaching the Gospel thing is Brother Marty’s job, not mine. But the word preach simply means to ‘trumpet abroad.’ Every one of us is responsible to 'trumpet abroad’ the Gospel. Wherein lies the other part of this problem. Too many believers are unclear about what the Gospel is. The Gospel is not convincing someone to go to church. The Gospel is not helping people overcome the bad things in their lives and turning over a new leaf. The Gospel is the good news that even though we are broken, fallen creatures, mired in sin, God loved us enough to send His Son, Jesus, to die in our place and pay the price for those sins. The Gospel calls every individual to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the Glory of the Father, to believe that God raised Him from the dead, and to call upon His name for salvation, forgiveness of sins, and a new birth. Most Christians don’t preach the Gospel because they can’t clearly articulate it.
3. The “Every Creature…Really? Even ___________?” Problem - We have allowed our fears and prejudices to put a barrier between us and those who most need the message that we bring. Whether our problem is the color of their skin, their political leanings, their immoral choices, or their religious beliefs, we cross people off of our list of those worthy of hearing the Gospel and assume that we are released of our responsibility to share it with them. This puts us in the same boat(pun intended) with the prophet Jonah, who couldn’t bring himself to go to Ninevah to preach to those wicked, fierce, pagan people. How did that work out for him?
So how do we win 8 billion people to Christ in a world whose population is growing by 80 million people a year? It’s simple really; not easy, but simple. Let’s do the math. Let’s assume that someone who knows and loves Christ could win one person to the Lord and then disciple them for a year until that disciple could win one person to Christ. And let’s assume that the original believer would continue to be a witness and in the next year he would win another person to Christ and disciple them. And if this process would continue faithfully for a generation, for the sake of today’s population about 45 years, where that believer and every person that he won and discipled would do the same, and so on, and so on. In that one generation, over 8 billion people would come to know Christ and be discipled. So even today, with the world’s population spinning out of control, if believers would just take the Great Commission seriously, we could win the world to Christ in our generation.
But you might say, “Brother Marty that’s just not realistic.” To which I say, we have the command, and we have His promise that, “Lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” What is possible is not for us to determine. It’s just time for us to obey.
Here’s a YouTube link to an old song that has a wonderful message to challenge us this morning. https://youtu.be/jW-QGncTDCs
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