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Pathways Through Paul
Daily Devotional
May 14
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Today's Pathway:
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In today's passage Paul opens by continuing to talk about his preaching ministry. Yesterday he concluded by saying that he had preached the Gospel from Jerusalem to Illyricum. In verse 20 he says that he had done that because his desire was to preach to people who had never heard the message of salvation. There is a great need today for Christians to go to unreached people groups. An "unreached people group" is defined as an ethnic group without an indigenous, self-propagating, Biblical church movement. In other words, any ethnic group without enough Christians to evangelize the rest of the nation. Reaching these areas ought to be the heartbeat of modern missions. The world is full of people who have never heard the Gospel, and in many case have never heard of Jesus. According to The Joshua Project,
"It is estimated that of the 7.75 billion people alive in the world today, 3.23 billion of them live in unreached people groups with little or no access to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There are approximately 17,446 unique people groups in the world with 7,400+ of them considered unreached (over 41% of the world’s population!). The vast majority (85%) of these least reached groups exist in the 10/40 window and less than 10% of missionary work is done among these people."
Paul's desire was to reach people such as these. He was not interested in building on someone else's foundation.
It should be noted here that there is nothing wrong with a man pastoring an established church if this is what God has called him to do. According to Ephesians 4:11 God gave various office gifts to the church, including both evangelists and pastor/teachers. The evangelist by definition would be someone who is going out and preaching the Gospel to those who have not heard it. He would then establish a local church with those who received Christ. The evangelist would then move on to a new area to preach and a pastor would go to that new church to teach and lead that congregation. Both pastors and evangelists are necessary to God's plan for the church. However, it seems that fewer and fewer people are interested in "pioneer" missions. George Zeller wrote,
"Paul’s church planting policy was to go to areas where the gospel had not yet been preached. Paul was a pioneer missionary, a trail-blazer, a church planter. His policy is also set forth in II Corinthians 10:14-16. The violation of Paul’s policy is oft repeated in our day as over-aggressive men... will enter a community to start a church even though there is already a solid Bible-believing, well established assembly of believers in the area. This results in carnal competition and unnecessary confusion and is totally contrary to the New Testament pattern. How tragic to intrude into territory that has already been claimed for Christ when there are so many other areas that desperately need a gospel testimony."
In verse 21 Paul quotes from Isaiah 52:15. The prophesy had been given that those who had never heard the message of salvation would hear it and understand it. It was Paul's goal to help to fulfill that prophecy. Because of that, according to verse 22, Paul has been unable to visit the church at Rome. He did not need to go there to start a church, for there was obviously one there already, and his evangelistic work with unreached people limited his ability to minister in established churches. However, according to verses 23-24 he hoped to visit with them as he traveled to Spain to do more evangelistic work. Tomorrow, among other things, we will look at what Paul anticipated occurring when he visited them.
Here is the challenge for today: how important is it to us to take the Gospel to the unreached world, and what are we doing to see that accomplished?
Pastor Mark J Montgomery
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