🌍 World Missions — Unit 10: The Unfinished Task

Introduction: The Task Is Not Yet Done

We have come to the end of our study, but the task itself has not come to an end. For all that God has done across the centuries — for all the giants and the martyrs, the translations and the churches — the Great Commission is still unfinished. There remain whole peoples on the earth who have never once heard the name of Jesus. In this final unit we ask three plain questions: What is the task that remains? Why does it still wait, after all these centuries? And what part will we — and especially the church in Mexico and Latin America — take in finishing it?

I. The Task That Remains

When Jesus gave the Great Commission, He did not tell us simply to reach every country; He told us to make disciples of every nation — every ethnos, every people, tribe, and tongue. The goal is the very scene that the apostle John was shown in heaven: "a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne" (Revelation 7:9, NKJV). Today the gospel has reached most of the countries of the world, and that is a great mercy. Yet thousands of distinct people groups still remain what missionaries call "unreached" — peoples among whom there is still no church strong enough to carry the gospel to its own. Many of them are found in a great band across North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia that is sometimes called the "10/40 Window." Billions of people are alive today who have never yet heard the gospel clearly even once. The task is not finished.

II. Why It Still Waits

Why, after twenty centuries, is the task still not done? It is not because God is unwilling, for He is "not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9, NKJV). It is not because the gospel has lost any of its power. The task still waits, in large part, because the church has not yet fully obeyed. There are still far too few laborers for so great a harvest, too little prayer, too little sacrifice, and far too many believers who have never seriously asked what part of the work belongs to them. The very failure we saw in the first church at Jerusalem — content to keep the gospel close to home — still slows the advance today. The unfinished task is therefore a summons: a call to the church to finish what the Lord Himself began.

III. A New Day for the Sending Church

For most of the modern missionary era, the missionaries went out from Europe and North America. But that day is changing before our eyes. In our own time God is raising up a great new missionary force from the very lands that once only received missionaries — from Africa, from Asia, and from Latin America. The church across the global South is no longer merely a mission field; it is fast becoming a mission force. A phrase has arisen to describe the new reality: the gospel now goes "from everywhere to everywhere" — from every continent, to every continent.

IV. The Part of the Mexican Church

And here we must speak plainly and directly to you. The church in Mexico stands today in a remarkable position. You share a continent, and deep ties of history, language, and culture, with much of Latin America and beyond. You have access, in many cases, to peoples and places that missionaries from the north cannot easily enter. And God has given you a vigorous and growing church. The same God who sent a shoemaker out from England and a tentmaker out from Tarsus is calling pastors and ordinary believers out from Mexico to take their place in the great work — to reach the unreached both at home and abroad, to send and support those who go, and to raise up a new generation that will carry the gospel to the ends of the earth. The Mexican church is not standing at the edge of the missionary story. By the grace of God, it may stand very near its center in the days to come.

V. How the Task Will Be Finished

How, then, shall the task be finished? In the same ways the Lord has always used. By praying the Lord of the harvest to thrust out laborers into His harvest. By going ourselves, wherever He sends us. By sending and faithfully supporting those whom He calls to go. By giving, so that the work does not stall for lack of means. And by raising children and training leaders for the next generation — which is the very reason this seminary exists. No single one of us can finish the task alone. But every one of us can take our place; and together, under God, the work will be done. For the Lord Himself has promised: "this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come" (Matthew 24:14, NKJV).

Conclusion: To the End of the Age

We began this course with the God who sends, and we end it with the task He has given us to finish. The same story that ran from Abraham to Antioch, from Carey to the martyrs in the jungle, now runs through us. The fields are still white for harvest. The Lord of the harvest is still calling. And the last word of the Great Commission still stands as true today as it did on the mountain in Galilee: "lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20, NKJV). So go — or send, or pray, or give — but do not stand idle while the task remains unfinished. To Him who sends us, and who goes with us to the very end, be glory among all the nations.

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