Our God is a Missionary God, Part 2
August 29, 2024 | by: Bret Willoughby | 0 Comments
Posted in: Guest Writers
In 1979, four years after I recorded a re-enactment of Jonah for school, I was in a stadium listening to John Stott expound on Jonah declaring in his perfect London accent, “Our God is a missionary God.” In fact, both Nancy and I, along with 17,000 other students attending Urbana 79, learned of Jonah the reluctant messenger. That was the first time we were in the same room. It only took me 9 years to meet her. Urbana is a tri-annual mission conference. We can’t think about that conference without hearing John Stott repeat the phrase, “Our God is a missionary God” in a proper British accent.
God’s heart for all nations and cultural groups is woven through out all of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. It starts with the Abrahamic Covenant and continues on to Revelation 7:9 where John describes heaven, saying there will be “a great multitude, that no one could number; from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands” praising God. God wants to use Abraham’s physical and spiritual descendants to bless the cultural groups of the world so that they will know that the Creator is merciful, gracious, slow to anger abounding in steadfast love from generation to generation. Yes, God will use reluctant missionaries like Jonah, you, and me, as we seek to expand the Kingdom of God.
The Psalms are not just poetry for Israel, about Israel, but are also an expression of God’s heart for all nations and all cultural groups.
When Nancy and I married, we were on our way overseas. If you had come to our wedding, you would have heard a familiar reading from Psalm 67:
“May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us,” rather than stop mid-sentence the reading continued, “that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations…Let the people praise you… Let the nations be glad and sing for joy.”
We want people praising the Creator, and sustainer of the universe.
Psalm 113:4 says, “The Lord is high above all nations, and his glory above the heavens.” Which “nations” can see the heavens? All nations even the nations at the north and south poles can see God’s handiwork in the stars and the heavens.
We are commanded to “declare God’s glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the people” (Psalm 96:3).
Yes, our God is a “missionary God” from Genesis to Revelation. Both the Old and New Testaments describe God’s heart and concern for all nations and cultural groups that we all may be reconciled to Him.
It is easy to think that God’s concern for missions starts with the Great Commission. The Great Commission is important and appears in all four Gospels and Acts, however, God speaks of his concern about all cultural and ethnic groups from Genesis to Revelation without touching on the Great Commission.
As we look through our newly acquired lens of “nations,” at the Great Commission in Acts 1:8, where Jesus commands us to be his “witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the end of the earth,” we can see the cultural progression. Jesus starts with Jerusalem and Judea, the very cultures to whom Luke first wrote in Acts. Then we are commanded to expand to go to a close by cultural group, the Samaritans, who were considered a “step-nation” to Israel. Lastly in the cultural progression, we are commanded to go to the “ends of the earth” so that we may be a blessing to those whom God is calling to himself. We are to proclaim to all peoples that God is “merciful, gracious, slow to anger abounding in steadfast love” (Psalm 103).
