ICS Daily Devotions
The Urgency to Preach the Gospel
Luke 4:40-44 (NKJV) When the sun was setting, all those who had any that were sick with various diseases brought them to Him; and He laid His hands on every one of them and healed them. And demons also came out of many, crying out and saying, “You are the Christ, the Son of God!” And He, rebuking them, did not allow them to speak, for they knew that He was the Christ. Now when it was day, He departed and went into a deserted place. And the crowd sought Him and came to Him, and tried to keep Him from leaving them; but He said to them, “I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also, because for this purpose I have been sent.” And He was preaching in the synagogues of Galilee.
In this passage, we saw that Jesus had the urgency to minister to the next group of people in another city who were lost without a shepherd. The very purpose of His coming was to preach the Kingdom of God so that those people could enter the Kingdom. Jesus knows that our physical body and everything that one owns is temporal, but it is the spirit man that lives for eternity. Jesus is aware that man will live and die once, and thereafter face judgement. He knows that nobody can face up to His righteous and just judgement because of the flaws of the earthly sacrificial system, and nobody can use their own strength to stand right before God. Although He came to minister to the Jews because they are their covenant people, through Abraham’s covenant, God desires for all the families of the earth to be blessed. His desire is for every nation, every tribe and everyone to be restored to Him.
Luke 19:9-10 (NKJV) And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham; for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
2 Peter 3:9 (NKJV) The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
God’s heart has not changed through time. He is still longing for those who are lost to return to Him. It is God’s desire that none should perish meaning nobody should enter into an eternity without Christ in his life.
God’s desire is for His church to rise to the call of world evangelism so that everyone will have a chance to listen to the Gospel, repent and be saved! As He has made known to us through the Great Commission, He is mobilising His entire body of believers to leave their place of comfort and reach out to the lost!
Sermon Series: It’s Urgent and a Top Priority
