The task of evangelism and missions can feel daunting. Our efforts to reach and teach the lost about Christ can feel so feeble, and perhaps leave us wondering if we have accomplished anything at all. If you have ever felt this way, may this article encourage you, for it reminds us that God’s sovereign providence guarantees the success of our missions against all odds, even our own limitations.
Ps Luwin Wong
God’s all-embracing providence shows us that evangelism and world missions are absolutely essential for people to be converted to Christ and for the nations to be reached, and they will be successful. These essential human activities of evangelism and world missions will be successful precisely because of God’s all-embracing providence that has the right and the power to convert sinners to himself.
Blessing or problem?
In other words, God’s providence guarantees the sending and going of missionaries and evangelists and witnesses to the neighbourhoods and nations of the world. And it guarantees that through these human means, conversions to Christ will happen, and the church of Christ will be built in all the places and among all the peoples that God intends for it to be.
The objection to evangelism and world missions to such a view of providence is this: the objectors say, “Well, there’s no point in evangelism and missions since God has planned already, even from eternity, who will be saved.”
How blind eyes are opened
Now, a glance at the Bible will reveal that God’s plan to save people is through the word. Romans 10:17 says, “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word.” And his plan is that this saving word be preached by human beings. The new birth comes through the living and abiding word, the gospel.
First Peter 1:23, 25 go like this: “You have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God. . . . And this word is the good news that was preached to you.” The gospel is not written in the clouds; it is entrusted to Christians who become witnesses and missionaries. If there were no human witnesses, there would be no salvation.
When Jesus commissioned Paul to the Gentiles, he said to do what only God can do. Listen to these words; these are the words of Jesus to Paul:
I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. (Acts 26:17–18)
Open blind eyes — really? Liberate from Satan — really? I mean, he’s just a mere human being, right? That was Paul’s mission, and it is ours. Jesus gives it to us — namely, to become the human means of what only God can do: open the eyes of the blind, the spiritually dead; raise them up to life. How do the blind see? How are the enslaved set free? Answer: by evangelism, by missions, by words — speaking the words. Faith comes by hearing — hearing by human words, speaking the word of God. We are the instruments. We become, in the hands of providence, the means of the miracle of the conversion of sinners to Christ everywhere.
Unthwartable Providence
But evangelism and world missions are even more amazing in the hands of providence. The obedient senders and goers in missions are not just the means of the miracle of conversion; they are themselves a miracle — the miracle of obedience. God’s providence is miraculously at work in us for obedience before he uses us for the work of the conversion of others. We are a miracle before we work miracles in the providence of God. From start to finish, evangelism and world missions are a gracious work of providence.
When we go or send in obedience to Christ, God has triumphed over our selfishness and our provincial limitations of his good news. And then, when we speak thus obediently to unbelievers, the Lord works the second miracle, according to Acts 16:14. Paul opens his mouth. He is now the obedient spokesman. And what happens? “The Lord opened [Lydia’s] heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.” The providence-created obedience of Paul speaking to Lydia is followed by the providence-created belief in the heart of Lydia.
As in the case of prayer, the unthwartable providence of God is not a problem for evangelism and missions; it is their only hope of success. The obstacles to missions around the world today are insurmountable but for one thing: that the providence of God is unstoppable.
It cannot be stopped by closed countries. It cannot be stopped by hostile religions. It cannot be stopped by difficult languages and cultures. It cannot be stopped by the ultimate self-determination of the fallen human soul, because in the world of God’s providence, there is no such thing as the ultimate self-determination of the human will. It does not exist. Only God is ultimately sovereignly self-determining.
Jesus will build his church
We may — indeed, we must — build our lives and our mission on this confidence: “I will build my church,” says the Lord Jesus, “and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). That is a statement of sovereign, purposeful providence. And to that end, Matthew 24:14 says, “This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”
(1) John Piper, (March 10, 2021), The Courage We Need for Mission. DesiringGod.
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