discovering missions - Southern Nazarene University

245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 30
30 The Heart of God
The New Testament
Ultimately, God sent one “greater than Jonah” and “greater than Solomon”
(Matthew 12:41-42). When Matthew introduced this greater one as “the son of
David, the son of Abraham” (1:1), he was connecting Jesus with the Abrahamic
covenant. It should not, therefore, be surprising that this promised Messiah started
and ended His earthly ministry with words about all peoples. At the onset of
Jesus’ ministry came the marvelous words of John 3:16: “God so loved the world.”
Then, with Jesus’ time on earth drawing to a close, He pointed out a connection
between the world mission enterprise of His followers and the consummation of
all things: “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a
testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14).
Taking Jesus at His Word
People who don’t believe in missions have not read the New Testament.
Right from the beginning, Jesus said the field is the world. The
early church took Him at His word and went East, West, North and
South. 10 —J. Howard Edington, pastor
Even though it took Peter time to embrace what Jesus said about going to
all peoples, it was clear that he had heard the message. In a sermon he preached
in the Temple not long after the Day of Pentecost, Peter looks back to the
Abrahamic covenant, “You are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God
made with your fathers. He said to Abraham, ‘Through your offspring all peoples
on earth will be blessed’” (Acts 3:25). Although Peter did not travel as extensively
as Paul, the Holy Spirit used him in some key cross-cultural preaching.
On the Day of Pentecost, it was Peter who preached to the cosmopolitan
crowd in Jerusalem. Later, Peter was pushed out of his Jewish comfort zone
when he was sent to preach in a Roman army officer’s house (Acts 10).
After his own conversion, Paul came to see that, from the beginning, the
Abrahamic covenant was meant to include the Gentiles. To the churches of
Galatia, Paul wrote, “Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by
faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: ‘All nations will be
blessed through you’” (Galatians 3:8).
The Gospels
As has been noted, Matthew 1 places Jesus within the lineage of Abraham,
the man to whom God had said, “All peoples on earth will be blessed through
you” (Genesis 12:3). The genealogy Matthew gives for Jesus has an intriguing
non-Abrahamic feature: four women, two of whom were not Hebrews. Because