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| Photo by NASA on Unsplash |
Once upon a time, God created the universe. He took time to create everything just right for humans to survive, and then He made humans as the last and crowning creation (read Genesis 1-2). Everything was good, and the first two humans had a personal relationship with God. God created them so that He would have someone to love and so that the humans would in return love and worship Him. Love requires a choice: if it is forced, it is no longer love. And so, God gave the first humans a command. As long as they obeyed Him with hearts that were in alignment with His, everything was good. But as the story goes in Genesis 3, they chose to disobey the one rule. As a result, the entire universe, especially its people, was cursed and separated from God and it remains that way to this day.
However, God still loves all humans, even though they spurned His love and rebelled against Him. So in the midst of His judgments on the first humans for their rejection, God inserted a promise for them and their descendants—all humanity. In Genesis 3:15, God promised to send an “offspring” of the woman who would be injured but would crush the head of the evil powers that now ruled the world. It was a promise for all humanity which would ultimately reunite them with God in love and in worship.
The next few chapters of Genesis deals with humanity as a whole. It demonstrates clearly how messed up they were now that evil and death had entered the world. At one point, they were so bad that in all the world only one man (Noah) cared about God.
In chapter 12, God narrowed in on one family. He chose a random person (Abram) and made a bunch of promises to him and his family. One might ask, “Did God stop caring about the rest of the world because He chose only Abram’s family?” Absolutely not! Look at the promises God made to Abram:
Now the Lord had said to Abram:
“Get out of your country,
From your family
And from your father’s house,
To a land that I will show you.
2 I will make you a great nation;
I will bless you
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
And I will curse him who curses you;
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
The last sentence in the set of promises, that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,” is the purpose for the rest of the promises. In other words, the only reason God chose Abram and Abram’s family is that God was intending to bless everyone in the world using them. How would God do it? By making the “offspring” mentioned in Genesis 3:15 born into Abram’s family. God’s goal was the same: reunite all people with God to love and worship Him.
Four hundred years passed and Abram’s family grew into the nation of Israel. They were also enslaved in Egypt. So in the first chapters of Exodus, God used 10 plagues to vividly declare how much more powerful He was over the other gods. God could have struck Pharaoh dead the instant he rejected God’s command to let the people free, but instead God used the opportunity to show His power and love for those who love and worship Him. As a result, we see the people in Canaan decades later shaking in their boots at the thought of God bringing His people into their land. In Joshua 2 and 6, Rahab decided she would get on board with God’s plans, and so she was rescued from death and joined God’s people, but the rest of the Canaanites who refused to work with God’s plan were judged (they had a 40 year warning but still didn’t go to God for mercy, join God’s people, or vacate the land; if they had, they would not have been killed). So we see that God showed Himself to all people and welcomes those who come to Him on His terms.
During that same time frame, God gave Israel more promises and laws. Again, it was so that all the nations would be able to come to God with love and worship. God promised the “offspring” would come through their people, and God also had them create a Tabernacle and later a Temple which was a place for them to come and worship Him. Built into the Temple was a courtyard where anyone of any nation could come and pray to God. Also, every person in Israel became a priest—an in-between person that makes peace and exchanges messages between God and other people, other people with no knowledge or access on their own (Exodus 19:6). Therefore, the purpose of Israel was to give access to God to anyone who heard of God and wanted to know and worship Him. The purpose of the Jewish laws was so that the nations would see who God is by the example of how the people lived. They failed for the most part, which we see in the rest of the Old Testament, but the intention was there. God’s goal wasn’t to make one nation special just because. God’s goal was to show Himself to all people and give them access to Him.
Why am I telling you all this ancient history? Because it goes to show that from the very beginning, God wanted all people to know Him so that they would love and worship Him. When they love and worship Him, all the evilness and death brought on by their initial rejection of Him disappears and is replaced with so much good, love, and life. Jesus is the key to all of it. He made the way for all people to come to God by His death and resurrection. And now He commands His people, those who believe in Him, to share in what He has been doing from the very beginning by telling the world of who He is so that they can love and worship Him which is the best thing for them.
There are so, so many more reasons for missions in the Bible, but I just wanted you all to know that Jesus didn’t just tack on the command to tell everyone about Him at the end of His time on earth. It has been His purpose from the beginning that all people come to know Him and everything He has been doing in the world is to accomplish that goal. We believers are commanded and privileged to join in accomplishing this goal.
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