F4S: God loves the Nations...

Friday, March 22, 2019

God loves the Nations...

..and loves this world’s “great mega-cities” and loves the smaller towns too. It's because He really cares about the individuals in them who will literally exist forever in one of two places. He wants them to end up with Him and so blessed. That includes you. 

And guess what.. He has given us Christians the Great Commission and the responsibility to visit and move into the cities of the nations.. for the purpose of serving the people there ..as well as to lovingly go share the Gospel with them. Timothy Keller and the Word seem to agree on this saying... 
"If you want human life as it is lived in this world to be shaped at all by Jesus Christ, we have to go to the city. Four kinds of people are there.
First of all, if you want to reach the next generation, you’ve got to go to the cities. Because young adults disproportionately want to live in cities and that’s where they go.
Another group — the most unreached peoples in the world — are more reachable in cities. When they immigrate to cities, either from the rural areas into cities in their own homeland, or to other countries’ cities, they break their kinship ties. In a more pluralistic environment, they are far more — humanly speaking — open to the gospel than they would ever have been in their previous habitat.
Thirdly, the people who tend to make the films, write the books, do the business deals — they’re there. The people that have the biggest impact on the cultures of the world are there.
And lastly, intriguingly, the poor. If you go to cities, you not only reach the elites of the world, but you also reach the poor. Something like one-third of all the people moving into the great cities of the world today are going to live in shanty towns. God cares about the poor. He loves the poor. If you go to cities, you not only reach the next generation, you not only reach the unreached peoples, you not only reach the people at the top, but you reach the people God loves at the bottom.

Psalm 19 tells us that nature does reflect God’s glory. But human beings, according to Genesis 1, made in the image of God, reflect God’s glory more than anything else in creation. In cities, you have more “image of God” per square inch than anywhere else in the world. A missionary friend of mine once quipped, “The country is where there are more plants than people, and the city is where there are more people than plants. Therefore, because God loves people more than plants, he’s got to love the city more than the country.”

Jonah didn't really care for a people group, nor did he care for their big city -- you know which one I mean. But God did so God changed him and the city.
Three hundred years ago, less than 3 percent of the world’s population lived in cities. Today, it’s over 50 percent, and growing rapidly. It’s estimated that eight million people, every two months, move into the cities of the world. That’s one new Bangkok every two months. The church has to be everywhere on earth.. right where the people live. The people are moving into the big city and other cities faster than the church seems to be. If you love what God loves.. you’ll love the city and city folk. Country and town folk too.
Think and read about Jonah. He didn't really give a flip for that big city that God was calling Him to go minister to, but God did. He changed and used Jonah there.
The Bible tells us to, "Publish his glorious deeds among the nations. Tell everyone about the amazing things he does." 1 Chronicles 16:24

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16