Paul’s concepts of a “reached area” and the primacy of the taught Word of God can be a help to every church and pastor who are wrestling with how to effectively be about reaching every tribe, language, people, and nation. Is every sent one from the church to go to an unreached location, and is every missions’ dollar to go towards a Romans 15 type ministry? Surely not. But the framework and implications serve us well in teaching, stewarding, and giving some level of priority to “those who have not heard.”

In the 15th chapter of the book of Romans, we have Paul laying out his rationale for why he must press on to new places that have yet to hear the gospel.
He says this; “So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ.  It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation.  Rather, as it is written: “Those who were not told about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand.  This is why I have often been hindered from coming to you.  But now that there is no more place for me to work in these regions, and since I have been longing for many years to visit you, I plan to do so when I go to Spain. I hope to see you while passing through and to have you assist me on my journey there, after I have enjoyed your company for a while.” Romans 19b-24.
There are two key observations about this passage. The first being that Paul says there are actual places where “there is no more place for me to work.” There was some metric by which Paul, the pioneer missionary, measured completion. Apparently, that metric had been fulfilled from Jerusalem to Illyricum, so Paul pressed on to places that still did not have what Jerusalem through Illyricum had.
This is no small point. Paul saw that there are limits to the missionary task. Every location did not count as a mission field to Paul. At some point, the task Paul was committed to was complete for a particular people group or location. Yes, churches need to be revitalized, least reached and poorly reached areas need help….but those were separate jobs from what Paul was called to do. His job was complete.
The second takeaway is that Paul saw the proclamation of the gospel as central to the missionary task. He is clear on this in Romans 10:13,14; “For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.  How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?”
The missionary is then to go to places that have no foundation and preach the gospel. Those who have never been taught cannot come to saving faith apart from someone preaching to them. The ambition of missionaries is to preach where Christ has not been known, to build that foundation.
Three implications that come out of those two observations are as follows.
Every Christian is Not a Missionary
This logical outworking from Paul’s statement in Romans 15 is probably the hardest for Christians in our day to accept.
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Today’s Christians have been armed with the Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God to wield in the battle over the gender ideas that will shape the rising generation in our nation, churches, and homes. But many Christian men are leaving their swords in their sheaths. Please, don’t do that. A lot of children and grandchildren are depending upon us to fight this battle for them.   

Today we begin our June series, “How God Uses Imperfect Dads to Impact Their Kid’s Lives,” with a look at the responsibility of Christian men to protect fatherhood itself in our culture by speaking out against the erosion of the biblical worldview of gender. What do you think of this statement? All that is necessary for woke forces to “cancel” fatherhood today is for Christian men to say nothing to stop them. The widespread attack in our culture upon gender roles is, at its core, an assault upon God’s creation design of the institution of the family–one man and one woman bound in the covenant of marriage to be the family where human children flourish.
The National Fatherhood Initiative, along with men’s ministries like Iron Sharpens Iron, have named June, National Fatherhood Month. A Google search also reveals other jurisdictions such as Fairfax County, VA, which have named June, Fatherhood Awareness Month. During a month when every Christian cringes at the promotion of the destructive LGBTQ+ life by naming June “Gay Pride Month,” Christians now have a gracious way to say, “I believe the gay life is destructive; I am celebrating National Fatherhood Month instead.” Will Christians be as passionate about promoting fatherhood this month as LGBTQ+ advocates are about promoting gay pride? This episode examines why our words promoting fatherhood need to be heard by our children, grandchildren, neighbors, and work associates. It further suggests winsome ways to present the biblical worldview that fatherhood is vital for human flourishing.
God has entrusted his revelation to his people so that we can enrich the rest of culture with its wisdom. Abraham, the father of both the Old Covenant and New Covenant people of God was chosen, with his posterity, to be a blessing to the nations (Gen 12:2-3). Jesus taught that his followers must shine our lights into the darkest corners of human existence, spreading truth about flourishing throughout the earth (Mt 5:14). The most important part of that light is revealing the truth that life is in Jesus—but that is not our only message. In God’s good plan for earth, the salt of the biblical worldview of sexuality, his design of gender and the family, injustice, and oppression, must be expressed by God’s people to preserve the earth, holding back the decay of sin (Matt 5:13): Our biblical worldview must spread like leaven throughout culture if we are to be faithful kingdom members (Mt 13:33).
Considering this clear calling, the blinding speed of gender theory’s spread throughout our culture in the last decade raises the question, “are Christians speaking up about gender issues? Or are we too afraid of being labeled patriarchal oppressors, gay bashers or transphobes?” Some Christian writers have flat out said that Christians who say nothing to stand against the gender blending forces in our culture are cowards. It is not my place to judge other Christian leaders, but the words of Martin Luther seem to have great significance today. He wrote,
If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are attacking at that moment, I am not being faithful to Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all battlefields, is mere flight and disgrace, if he flinches at that point. (Who Speaks for God, Chuck Colson).
The Biblical Worldview of Fatherhood
A. God himself is called God the Father. Names matter in Scripture. God did not call himself God the Mother. Jesus repeatedly called the first person of the Trinity, Father, teaching his disciples to do the same (Mt 6:9). When Jesus gave his marching orders to his church, he commanded, Go and make disciples, baptizing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of The Holy Spirit. There is something about the very nature of God that is described by the word, father.
B. Male/female distinctions matter to God. In God’s revelation to us about our own creation, God devotes five verses in Genesis 1 to emphasizing that Adam and Eve equally share the dignity of being God’s image bearers. In Genesis 2, God devotes twenty-one verses to showing how differently he created Adam and Eve. In a perfectly parallel structure, God emphasizes how differently he created male and female to be.
Adam is: 1) made FOR the ground–the garden is described as needing a gardener, 2:5, 2) made FROM the ground–2:7, 3) given a name that means ground–2:20, 4) called to work the ground–2:15. 5) When he sins, what is cursed is the ground (3:17). Eve is: 1) made FOR the man–to provide companionship–2:18), 2) made FROM the man–2:21, 3) given the name woman ISHA because she came out of the man ISH–2:23, 4) called to be a partner with the man–2:20. 5) When she sins, what is cursed is her relationship with the man and their kids–3:16.
Why, in the creation story, would God devote just five verses to Adam and Eve’s identical roles but four times that number, (twenty-one) to their differences? The only answer I can come up with is because the differences are important. For four -thousand years of history, these differences have been recognized, and they have been fully substantiated by science. It is only OUR CULTURE, because of the influence of the LGBTQ+ movement, that attempts to deny the obvious male/female differences in design. Our children, grandchildren, neighbors and work associates need to hear how important male/female differences are in the mind of God.
C. After our race’s fall, the paradigm for our restored personal relationship with God is calling him Abba. Paul observes, For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” All believers have the privilege of calling the God of the universe, Abba! Father! Paul does not say that we can now call God Mama.
D. In God’s book, the Bible, history does not begin with government, or even the church; it begins with a wedding—that of Adam and Eve. And it ends with a wedding—the marriage super of the Lamb. The institution that God chose for perpetuating the human race is the family, where the child is loved by both a father and a mother. Creation itself tells us that the nuclear family is not just a social construct. The biological fact that conception takes place in the context of husband and wife making love speaks volumes about the best environment for a child to be nurtured to healthy adulthood. In God’s obvious creation design, for a child to fully thrive, he needs a family built on mom and dad’s love for each other, not a village. Radical extremists on both the right (Hitler) and the left (Mao Tse Tung) claimed that children belonged to the state, not to parents.
E. Through Paul, God spells out the way he wants the human family structured. Paul defines the different responsibilities of wives, then husbands, then children—commanding them to obey their parents. So, we might expect the next group Paul addresses to be parents; but it is not. How about mothers? No. It is striking that when Paul addresses household responsibilities, especially the training of the children, he doesn’t mention mothers but gives commands to fathers. This pattern of responsibility began with Abraham, the Father of the Christian Faith.
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From my visiting churches to preach on the book of Revelation, I’ve discovered something. People tend to talk more about the book of Revelation than about the message of the book.
Many people hear Revelation and, like a word association test, their minds immediately go to their position on the millennial reign of Christ. Most recently when a congregant heard that I was there to speak on Revelation, he felt compelled to identify himself as a premillennialist, as though that settled the matter and satisfied the book’s purpose. On another occasion, a member of the congregation lingered to inform me that he was a staunch partial preterist. He went so far as to say that Revelation cannot be understood apart from an early date for its writing.
While hermeneutical approaches and questions of date are worthwhile considerations, are they necessary to glean benefit from the book of Revelation? I believe that our Lord’s message to us in the book is apparent apart from these considerations, and a preoccupation with them can lead us to miss the substance our Lord has for us.
A Pastoral Letter from Our Lord
Imagine going off to college. While unpacking, you discover a letter from your parents. The letter contains counsel to you at this stage of your life, telling you what to expect, what challenges you will face, and how to conduct yourself. They assure you of their love and provision for you. They paint a picture of what your future could be like. As you read the letter, you hear echoes of things your parents have taught you your entire life.
That sort of letter is what our Lord Jesus has given to us in the book of Revelation. Just as college can hold many dangers through worldviews contrary to the Christian faith and temptations to indulge in self-serving ways, so this fallen world presents challenges for us who bear the name of Christ. In the final book of the Bible, our Lord speaks to equip us for life as His disciples in what can be a hostile and inhospitable world.
Revelation is often seen as a cipher, an answer key to the future. While things to come are certainly in view, the primary focus is not tomorrow but today. John lays out how we are to approach the book. “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near” (Rev. 1:3).
Read-Hear-Keep
John instructs us to read, hear, and keep what is written. We handle the “word of God” and “testimony of Jesus” (Rev. 1:2) properly when we give ear to it. We are not to neglect it but must take it in hand and take note of the message our Lord has packed for us for the journey we face as those who are in the world but not of the world.
Not only are we to take note, but we are to take heed. We must attend to what our Lord says, and especially in the book of Revelation, what He shows us. Revelation is filled with evocative imagery that brings to mind Old Testament anticipation. Like that letter from parents to their student at college, we have heard these things before and are eager to see them at hand. We are to incline our ear to God and dig deep to plumb the depth and richness of the redemptive landscape in which we find ourselves in these last days (Heb. 1:1–4).
One other element is necessary for rightly approaching the book of Revelation.
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