discovering missions - Southern Nazarene University

245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 31
names of Hebrew male ancestors would have sufficed to show the authenticity of
the Messiah’s lineage, the inclusion of non-Hebrew women in this most-Jewish
of the Gospels clearly signals that Matthew saw Jesus as a Messiah for all peoples.
There is no gospel without mission, and there is no mission without
the gospel. 11 —Alex Deasley, Nazarene Theological Seminary professor
The Heart of God 31
Matthew tells how the infant Jesus was sought out by Gentiles, magi from
the East (Matthew 2:1-11). The area where Jesus grew up was called “Galilee
of the Gentiles” (4:15; cf. Isaiah 9:1). The Gospels recount significant ministry
encounters Jesus had with Gentiles. Among those was the encounter with the
Syro-Phoenician woman (Mark 7:24-30), an episode in which Jesus was likely
showing His disciples the absurdity of their narrow, prejudicial ethnocentrism.
A man Jesus delivered from demonic possession in the area of the Gerasenes
may have been a Gentile (Mark 5; Luke 8). After healing a Roman centurion’s
servant, Jesus said that Gentiles would one day join Jewish patriarchs at the
feast (Matthew 8:11, likely a reference to Isaiah 25:6-12).
The episode in which Jesus cleansed the Temple is full of global mission
implications. People are inclined to think Jesus got upset because of commerce
going on in the Temple, but that does not seem to be the trigger point for Jesus’
anger. What Jesus said that day was: “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be
called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers”
(Matthew 21:13, NRSV, quoting Isaiah 56:7). The disturbing thing, therefore,
for Jesus was not currency exchange or the selling of sacrificial birds. The
main issue was that because an area of the Temple (most likely the Court of the
Gentiles) was occupied by commerce, the Temple was being kept from being “a
house of prayer for all the nations.”
The first time Jesus sent His followers on a preaching mission, it was to
their fellow Jews (Matthew 10). However, His best-known “go” command is
His post-Resurrection restatement of the “all nations will be blessed” part of
the Abrahamic covenant. That restatement, found in Matthew 28:19-20,
launched Jesus’ followers into a vocation to create a global fellowship spanning
all clan and cultural boundaries. It has been rightly said that this Great Commission
of Jesus is not the Great Suggestion. Missionary Hudson Taylor said
the same thing in a slightly different way, “The Great Commission is not an
option to be considered; it is a command to be obeyed.” 12 Those who take
Scripture seriously understand that this Great Commission, also found in
Mark 16:15, is the Church’s Kingdom calling.