S. L. Jacob
The Mission, the Missionary, and the Field
The field is the world. Into this world God sent His Son on this great mission, “For the bread of God is He which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world,” and again, “For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved.”
Our blessed Lord then was the great Missionary, or Sent One. More than forty times in the Gospel of John He is so called. He brought the knowledge of the love of God into this world; and in His death the glory of God’s love has been manifested here, that men might be supremely blest.
Before our Lord’s time God sent forth many servants (Matt. 21:34-36), but these were manifestly sent to the house of Israel; for only in a very minor way did the prophets speak to the Gentiles, who were left in ignorance; and the times of this ignorance God winked at, though now He commandeth all men everywhere to repent.
Indeed our Lord Himself came in the first place to Israel only (Matt. 15:24); but He could not be restrained, and the more His rejection by Israel came out, the more widely His divine compassions became manifest, and He taught by act and parable that His mission was to the whole world (Matt. 8, 11; 13, see the parables thereof; John 4:34-38).
We read in several places in the gospels of the twelve being sent out by Him to preach and to heal, and also of seventy being sent out for the same purpose; and all this was evidently in view of what they were to do after His death. Therefore in each gospel we get the great commission, or mission, of His disciples set forth each in its own distinct way, showing that the whole world was to be in the scope of the gospel. The last words of our Lord before He was taken up into heaven were, “Ye shall receive power, after the Holy Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
If it be replied that some of these commissions at the end of the different gospels have a dispensational bearing, and are not applicable to us, the answer is “Not so!” A dispensational bearing they unquestionably have, but not so as to exclude a present application also; and if we miss the present bearing of Scripture, we shall be great losers. A study of the quotations from the Old Testament in the New will prove that very few quotations are made to skew their exact dispensational fulfillment, but almost always it is a present application which is pressed. Moreover, whatever may be said as to the dispensational character of the commission in Matthew’s Gospel, there can be no question that the words of the Lord in Luke bear altogether on this day (24:47).
The great mission that the Lord gave to His disciples may be stated in His own words, thus: “As Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world (John 17:18); and “As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you” (John 20:21). To be in the world as He was in it, and to make Him known, is therefore their mission throughout the length and breadth of it; and the Holy Spirit was sent down from heaven to be in them the power for this most blessed service.
Strange to say, an argument often used in the present day is that “the times of the heathen Gentiles have not yet come: and therefore they should be left in ignorance.” The pitifulness of this astounding statement is exceedingly great, seeing that they who use it are themselves Gentiles, and “the apostle of the Gentiles” is their great apostle (Rom. 11:13). But it only proves how easy it is to fall from the simplest truths of Scripture.
A thought which has long been before us is this: “How has this mission which the Lord gave to His own been carried out, and what is the state of things in the world with regard to it at the present time?”
These are questions which it is very difficult to answer, and which are only capable of imperfect answers at best; yet it may not be without interest to seek to get some little knowledge of the subject. If a friend comes from some other town or country, we are glad to hear from him something about the Lord’s work in that town or country. We do not say, “He cannot give a correct account, he knows not the hearts of men, therefore we will listen to nothing.” No, we listen with eagerness; though we quite understand that much that is said will have to be subsequently corrected at a future day. It is thus with regard to our subject: we desire to understand the matter as well as we can, and any help should be cordially received: hence this feeble attempt to interest our readers.
Feeble the attempt must be for a three-fold reason: 1St, because of the vastness of the subject; 2nd, because of our own lack of knowledge; and 3rd, because in a magazine of this sort we must be very brief. All we can hope to do is to stimulate our readers to look into matters for themselves, and so increase the interest of saints in the whole circle of Christ’s interests; for how, otherwise, are we to fulfill the apostolic injunction to pray for all men (1 Tim. 2:1), and all saints (Eph. 6:18), and how else can we truly and intelligently desire that God’s will may be done on earth even as it is in heaven. Surely nothing should be allowed to rob us of this longing.
We must remember that the outward, responsible history of any movement of God must necessarily be a sad one. Every dispensation ends in failure, every movement of God committed to man begins to deteriorate from that very moment, and continues so to do until God comes in with fresh energy of the Spirit.
Moreover we are plainly taught in the Scriptures that unless we continue to advance, make progress, and conquer, we shall be defeated and enslaved. Compare the Book of Joshua with the Book of Judges, for proof of this; and even the latter part of Joshua is sad reading compared with the former. The twelfth chapter is a list of conquests, the thirteenth begins in a sad strain: Joshua was old, and there remained “yet very much land to be possessed,” and hundreds of years of sad experiences had to be passed through before this land was possessed by a new energy of God manifested in David, a remarkable type of Christ.
The Acts of the Apostles is like the Book of Joshua, and also ends in a different strain to its beginning, concluding in the account of the shipwreck of the twenty-seventh chapter-a parable of what was to follow. The Church’s history on earth since then answers to the Book of Judges, and is a sad history of failure relieved by many interventions of the grace and goodness of God. But though the appalling failure of that which bears the name of Christ might well make us weep, there is no need for despair, for the resources of our God are not exhausted, and Christ fails not.
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Let no man think error in doctrine a slight practical evil: no road to perdition has ever been more thronged than that of false doctrine. Error is a shield over the conscience and a bandage over the eyes.